MITHRIL Report: Female Ops Booklet
by JonaBee
Summary: Rapid physical metamorphosis has caused undue alteration of mission parameters. Will continue mission after re-assessing priorities. Urzu 7 out.
1. Prologue

Mithril Report: Female Ops Booklet.

Disclaimer: We do not own Ranma or FMP, or EMP, for that matter, or FMA, or AMP, or...

Summary: Rapid physical metamorphosis has caused undue alteration of mission parameters. Will continue mission after re-assessing priorities. Urzu 7 out.

Note: We've gone over the fic, and moved a few plot points around, rewriting others. We hope to have another chapter out soon, and we may have a new co-author joining in.

Prologue: Altered Parameters.

In a small, dark room full of computer monitors, a lone soldier sat, his eyes ranging across the displays, which all showed views of hallways or rooms in what looked like a giant lab complex.

"I hate my job," the man muttered, as he sat casually in his chair, leaning backwards and sipping on a cup of coffee. "You sign up to serve the motherland, and what do you end up with? Feh."

"Yeah, real sorry about that, must really suck," a second voice said behind him, in near perfect Russian with a slight Japanese accent.

"Yeah, and you know what? I haven't been promoted in five years! Five years! I tell you, it's..." He stopped, seemingly realizing something important, and slowly turned to see a Japanese man in a black and grey suit of light body armor leaning against the rear wall, smirking at him.

"What the hell?" he demanded, reaching for his sidearm, before his opponent blurred, first numbing his arm with a lightning fast poke to the wrist, and then knocking him cold with a similar jab to the back of his neck.

"Hikari, Kage, guard subdued," the Japanese man reported, pressing his hand against an earpiece he wore in his right ear.

"Did you do it?" a tinny voice came from the other end, obscured slightly by static and the encoding the headset used.

The man sighed, and pulled a small device from a pocket before sliding it into a port on the guard's security terminal with a click. "Yes, I did it, and I got the remote relay in. Now where's the records room?"

"Level C, Room C-41, but you'd better hurry, TDD-1's planning on blowing this place in forty minutes." the crackling voice responded, quickly.

The man rolled his eyes. "I'll get this done in ten minutes," he smirked, before kneeling to grab a key card off of the guard's unconscious form. For a moment, he felt guilty about the idea that a cruise missile strike would obliterate the base, and this man, shortly, but unfortunately he had no time to evacuate an entire military installation full of angry Russians.

"Maybe they'll promote you posthumously," he offered, actually slightly hopeful, before turning and leaving the room. Making his way quickly down clearly marked halls, the man wondered at how little security was on a target this apparently important. It really wasn't like the Russians to bother with a facility this big without securing it a lot better, and he doubted that the little scuffle that had taken place a few days earlier had really depleted the place's reserves all that much.

Carefully edging himself to the crack of a large, metallic door, the man tried listening to it, despite the fact that he knew that should be impossible. Some things, after all, were eventually beaten in so hard you didn't forget, and the person who'd taught him to sneak around was very good at that.

Just before he slid his stolen key card into a slot on the door's security panel, the man could have sworn that he heard a loud crash from behind it. He froze for a moment, straining to hear, but nothing more came, and he finished going through the sequence that should open the door to the base's main data storage center.

When the door slid open, what he saw inside was not the massive bay full of black computer servers that he had expected, where he would spend a boring ten minutes waiting for information to transfer onto the little retrieval unit he'd brought. No, instead, there was a large, humanoid form crouching in the room, its eyes glowing.

"You've got to be kidding me," the man muttered, and this was apparently the wrong thing to do, as the form abruptly erupted in motion, smooth, silvery limbs uncoiling, revealing a huge battle rifle that belched shots, tearing holes in walls.

"We've been compromised!" the man yelled, holding his right hand to his ear both to activate his headset and stop some of the ringing, the sound of the enemy's shots being bounced and reverberated in the small space.

"What, did you screw up and alert a guard patrol or something?" the person on the other end of the line asked, though the man could barely hear them as a massive shell impacted into the wall next to him.

"No, someone put a fully active A S in the server room," Kage snapped, turning and starting to head down the hall as quickly as he could. As he did so, several soldiers turned down the hall from the other direction, holding rather mean looking rifles. He immediately turned, throwing out one arm and lobbing a massive ball of blue energy down the hallway, in hopes that it would stop some of the gun fire and maybe knock the troops over.

Unfortunately, his already rather terrible luck ran all the way out when the RK-92 Savage that had been waiting in the server room apparently got tired of waiting, its giant arm smashing through the doorway and coming at him down the hall. "Crap," he muttered, leaping up before the metallic fist could reduce him to a red smear on the ground, and running along the arm, jumping off at the elbow and continuing down the hall.

Removing something from his belt, he threw it backwards, landing it on the elbow joint of the massive robot as it withdrew back into its room, and smirked as he heard a loud detonation. "All right, this mission's a wash," he complained, beginning to make his way out of the building. "No useful data recovered, probably 'cuz they figured out we knew where they were hiding from that last rescue op."

"Au contraire," the voice on the other end of his communications line responded. "Evil Overlord Vow #169. If I am ever required to create a giant computer system, I will at least be sure to equip it with the basic security measures of a small business."

"Huh?" Kage asked, confused.

His controller sighed. "Never mind, let's just say I got some interesting location data off of the security network..." she trailed off as gunshots echoed in the background again, and the infiltrator began to do his best to move erratically in the tight confines of the corridor. "I assume you want extraction now?"

"Would be nice," the black clad man responded, casting another wave of blue energy backwards, as he caught sight of the base's personnel exit from this level, covered by a rather thick steel blast door. "Damn it," the man muttered, skidding to a halt at the end of the hall, before slapping himself on the side of the head.

Rearing back, he smashed one fist into the wall next to the door, and smirked as it gave with the crumbling of stone. "Doors too, too over-rated," he chirped in imitation of a high pitched female voice, before diving out the hole and running into the snowy night.

HR.

"Ah, that's good," the man said, as he casually leaned back in the couch on the evacuation chopper, eating a lump of grey stuff that may or may not have been pork with evident enjoyment.

"Only person I've ever met who likes those things," the aircraft's pilot muttered to herself, checking the course and speed as she prepared for the rather complex operation of meeting the Tuatha de Danaan during its very short surfacing window.

"Ah, you're just too used ta eating whatever you want whenever you want," the man objected. "Now if you want bad food..." He trailed off, looking out the window into the blowing snow for a moment, before shaking his head.

"You sure you're only 35, Sgt? You sound like my father when he told me his old 'Nam stories."

The Sgt. in question shrugged, before putting down the grey mass, loosening the back of his battle armor and removing a rather bedraggled looking pigtail. "Everyone's allowed to be nostalgic every once in a while," he objected, causing the pilot to smirk.

"Whatever you say, Sir," she commented, before a beeping from her console drew her attention. Looking down to a small computer screen set in the middle of the console, she winced. "Well, you should enjoy your gourmet meal now, sir. Looks like they're sending you back out into the trenches."

"Huh?" the man asked, sitting up straighter in his seat and looking over inquisitively.

"Apparently there is a 'situation requiring the expertise of Sgt. Ranma' in Chofu, Japan, and I am to land on TDD-1 only to refuel before transporting him there," the pilot read off, quickly.

The man sighed irritably. "Great. What is it this time, a demon they don't wanna admit exists?"

"No idea, sir," the pilot replied, as the helicopter began to bank slowly, coming into sight of a large, shadowy form in the water beneath it. "The refueling will take me about twenty minutes, maybe you can get some answers then."

"Thanks, Hikari," Ranma said, as the chopper touched down on a lift on top of the colossal submarine Tuatha de Danaan, lowering out of sight of the surface on a giant lift before a hatch slid closed above it.

HR.

He stood, and he paced. All of his senses were screaming that there was danger everywhere, and that he should be with the target at all times, but an equal sense of foreboding came into play when he thought of opening the door she was currently behind.

He wasn't sure what that sense meant, but it had saved him from having his head blown off several times in the past, and Sgt. Sousuke Sagara was inclined to trust his instincts. Still, he thought as he turned around for another walk past the door labeled "Changing room," his life was nowhere near as important as the target's, and this mission had been labeled top priority.

The fact was that Kaname Chidori was currently vulnerable, and he was letting his sense of self-preservation get in the way of keeping her safe. Having made that decision, the young sergeant straightened up, squared his shoulders, turned and marched up to the change room door, throwing it open and carefully looking around.

The fact that the room was full of nude women impinged on his awareness only long enough for him to discard it as unimportant data, and he continued to scan for threats, right up until one massive one appeared. Well, actually, it was several hundred small ones. The girls had reacted as any normal human being, and therefor not Sousuke, would be able to predict, and grabbed anything they could lay hands on to drive off the pervert who had barged into the girls locker room.

The Sagara boy wasn't sure how to proceed, as he was being attacked, but most of the projectiles bounced off with nothing but mild bruising, until he noted an unusually bulging sock bouncing back from where it had hit the top of the door frame, and towards Kaname. The boy reacted in an instant, leaping forward to deflect the potentially harmful item, when he was caught in the face by a bottle of spring water, which made a rather painful thwacking noise as it hit his nose, and its top popped off due to the sudden increase in internal pressure caused by being smacked against said body part.

Sousuke stumbled back, tripping on a hair brush that was laying at his feet, and hit the ground with a whumph as water splashed all over the front of his school uniform. As this happened, the military boy was overcome by a tremendous sense of dizziness, and his eyes became blurry for several moments, as he tried to focus again.

Sousuke spent several seconds just laying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and feeling that something in the tactical situation had shifted greatly, and it would be best if he didn't take any action until he could figure out what that something was. Unfortunately, Kaname wasn't willing to share that view, as she, as well as another girl wearing a set of thin rimmed round glasses, appeared in his vision.

"Um, I think we made a mistake," the teal haired girl said, quietly, as she reached down and patted Sousuke's chest. The sergeant was inclined to jump in surprise from the very unfamiliar sensation this caused, but suppressed that reaction in order to respond.

"I only entered this area to ensure your safety, Miss Chidori," he said, trying to explain himself, before clamping his mouth shut, shocked at the high voice that came from it.

"Ensure my safety?" the girl in question asked, confused. "Look, the other girls and I are sorry about hitting you with all that stuff, but what do you expect when you come in here wearing a boys uniform?

"But I was told that this uniform was appropriate for this school," Sousuke asked, confused. "No one seemed to mind it when I first arrived."

"Um, yeah," the girl with the glasses contributed. "That's the BOYS uniform."

"I... fail to see a problem." Sousuke admitted, blinking up at her.

The girl in the glasses sighed, and looked to Kaname. "How much you want to bet someone hit her in the head with something?" she drawled.

"Kyoko! That's mean!" Kaname objected, and then straightened slightly, offering Sousuke a hand up. He gratefully took it, regaining his feet, though he felt off balance and dizzy for some reason. As he looked around the room again, remembering that he had come in to it to look for threats to Kaname's safety, his eyes caught on a mirror that reflected a very strange image.

Kaname and her friend, now identified as Kyoko, were reflected back at him, but standing between them was a very confused looking red haired girl, wearing an obviously too large male school uniform. Sousuke raised one hand to rub at his eyes, feeling that he must be suffering some form of optical illusion, and noted that the girl in the image was doing the same thing.

"That's... impossible," he muttered, quietly.

"Did you say something?" Kaname asked, turning towards him and still looking worried.

"No, I have to go," Sousuke said quickly, deciding that he currently wasn't combat effective, and he needed to perform a tactical withdrawal to assess what was going on. As he turned and started for the door, his pants slipped down around his ankles, his boxers just barely hanging on to hips that seemed far too wide yet paradoxically too small.

"Oh, you can't go out like that!" Kaname said, shocked. "Where did you even get those oversized clothes, anyways?"

"I..." Sousuke started, before being interrupted by Kaname again.

"Does anyone have clothes that could fit her?"

"That won't be necessary," Sousuke objected quickly, but he apparently wasn't being listened to, as Kaname grabbed him by the arm and guided him towards a bench in the middle of the room. As someone held up a school uniform and the accompanying undergarments before him, the Sagara youth felt a sense of impending doom much stronger than that he'd felt before entering the bathroom, and began automatically scanning the area for exits before he caught Kaname, smiling reassuringly at him.

"Must be a new student, huh?" she asked, grabbing one arm of his school uniform top and starting to pull it off. He didn't resist, far too confused, only flinching when she pulled his sidearm from his shirt pocket and looked down on it. "Toy gun, huh? You know that Sousuke guy?"

"Actually, I..." Sousuke started, before the sense of impending doom got much, much worse and he clamped his mouth shut, beginning to dress in the clothes he'd been given. After all, he had done similar things during his youth to camouflage himself during raids into small towns for food, and, for some reason, the girls uniform fit disturbingly well.

HR.

Five minutes later, Sousuke stood in the school yard, looking back at the girls change room as her skirt tickled disconcertingly around her legs. She had discovered that she was definitely female, as the human anatomy books she had read had described the difference, and was now obviously rather concerned about it. Still, the target needed to be protected.

Reaching over her shoulder, she extracted a small radio from her backpack and keyed in a frequency before speaking. "Urzu 2, this is Urzu 7, I've run into unforeseen difficulties while carrying out the mission."

"Urzu 7? Sousuke? What happened to your voice?" Sgt. Major Melissa Mao asked from the radio, startled.

"That isn't important right now," Sousuke stated. "I'm afraid my ability to monitor the target has been compromised, I'd like to return to base while Urzu 6 continues."

"Sousuke, what is going on out there?" Mao asked, genuinely worried at the fact that one of her most dedicated subordinates was requesting relief.

Sousuke sighed, knowing that this sort of report usually required some form of physical proof to believe, but went on anyways. "I am currently standing in the schoolyard, without my pistol, in a girls school uniform, and physically female."

The line went dead silent for a moment before Mao exploded, "You've got to be ki..." she trailed off, realizing who she was supposedly talking to, and then demanded, "Name, rank and serial number."

"Sergeant Sousuke Sagara, Bravo Tree One Two Eight," said soldier responded instantly.

"Holy... You're serious," Mao muttered, before apparently calling up her other teammate without switching Sousuke's radio off. "Urzu 6, get over to the school. I think Urzu 7's finally flipped!"

"Sgt. Major, I could be hallucinating, but I don't know why I would suddenly believe I was female due to stress," Sousuke contributed.

"Hey, who's that? She sounds cute," Urzu 6 cut in, before Mao could respond.

"Never mind. Urzu 6, get to the school. Urzu 7, get back to base now!" the woman commanded, frustrated.

"Yes, Ma'am," two voices chorused, before Sousuke's radio went dead and she started for home.

HR.

"I can't believe you almost shot me!" Kyoko proclaimed, as she and Kaname walked out of the change room, the latter holding a small black pistol at arms length as though it were a dead fish.

"I didn't know the thing was REAL!" the teal haired girl defended herself, visibly shaken. "I mean, she was another student, like us, how was I supposed to know she was carrying a loaded gun?"

"I dunno Kaname, she was pretty weird," Kyoko objected. "I could have sworn that when she opened the door she didn't have that bright red hair, and she was a lot taller, too."

"Yeah, well, that was probably an optical illusion from her being silhouetted against the sun," Kaname insisted. "Now can you help me find a way to get rid of this thing before I accidentally kill someone with it?"

"I don't know, give it to Mrs. Kagurazaka," Kyoko suggested.

"Yeah, and she'll think it's a toy and shoot herself with it," Kaname disagreed. "Aren't these things supposed to have safeties?"

"They're supposed to be next to the barrel... I think," Kyoko offered tentatively.

"Yeah, but I'm not going to pull any of the levers to find out what they do again," Kaname proclaimed, and then sauntered over to a garbage can next to the school's main entrance, dropping the offending item into it. "There, hopefully it'll get compacted in the dump or something."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Kyoko disagreed, but Kaname apparently refused to entertain anymore strangeness for the day, and was heading in for class. The light brown haired girl took a few seconds to photograph the gun sitting in the garbage with her digital camera, before following her friend inside.

HR.

"And our captain's name is?" Melissa Mao asked, as she lay on a couch, staring across at a short, red haired girl who was standing at attention in front of her.

"Teletha Testarossa," the girl replied.

"And her age?"

"She just turned seventeen two months ago," the girl answered quickly, drawing a long, annoyed sigh from her commanding officer.

"You're Sousuke all right," Mao muttered. "Well, I've proven your identity, and that you're definitely female, now all we have to know is how."

Sousuke nodded. "It's very unnerving," she admitted, before moving to a kitchen chair nearby and sitting in it. "Should we report this to headquarters?"

"I already have," Mao responded. "I'm pretty sure I heard snickering from the radio operator, but he says he'll pass it on."

"Then I suppose all we can do now is wait," Sousuke replied, as the front door to the apartment opened.

"Honey, I'm home!" Kurz Weber called loudly, before entering the main room with his arms behind his head. "Angel's back at her apartment, safe and sou... wow, who's the kid?" he trailed off, as he turned to Sousuke, crouching to look into her face.

"That would be Sergeant Sagara," Mao replied, exasperated.

"Oh," Weber said, suddenly rather nervous and confused. "I didn't know you were into that sort of thing."

Sousuke wanted to ask what sort of thing the group's sniper meant, but the man was walking off into the kitchen too quickly for her to open her mouth.

"He's not, you asshole," Mao snapped at the blond man's back.

"Well, you know," Weber said, turning around and waving his hands rapidly, "there's nothing wrong with it, I just thought..." Noting Mao's glare, and Sousuke's confused look, he deflated. "I'm missing something big, aren't I?"

Mao nodded, and was about to reply, when the communications unit in the corner of the room chimed and she got up, walking over to it and picking up the headset. Hitting the message received button, she listened for a moment and blinked. "Yes, I confirm," she said, sounding confused, before setting the headset down and tapping the button that would shut down the radio.

Looking back at Sousuke and Kurz, she shrugged. "They say they think they know what's going on, and that there's a specialist flying out to help Sousuke out. Also, they..." She shook her head. "They ordered the Sergeant to take a hot bath."

HR.

"Okay, so don't keep me in suspense, why are we flying out to Tokyo?" Ranma grimaced as those were the first words he heard, as he climbed into the helicopter that was still waiting on the pad, its engine running.

"Sorry, SRT stuff," he replied, holding up a manilla folder with a bright red "Eyes Only" stamped across the seal.

"What, so they tell the field agent and not the operator?" she asked, indignantly, starting to flick switches on the console.

Ranma smirked. "Something tells me I'm not gunna need support on this one," he muttered, opening the folder with a small knife he kept on his armor's harness, and removing a white slip of paper.

"What, did they decide to assign you to the X-files full time?" the pilot asked, snorting and turning back to her work.

"Nah, this is more like the stuff I dealt with when I was a kid," Ranma countered, eliciting a wince.

"That bad, huh?" Hikari asked, as the lift began to raise the chopper to launch position and the Tuatha de Danaan surfaced for a moment, its ECS making it look as though they were floating on top of a massive crater in the water.

As they flew into the sky, Ranma casually let his eyes track down the paper, ignoring the blacked out mission goal and target sections to see the situation report. "Jusenkyo?" he yelped, startled, only to receive an inquisitive raised eyebrow from the front seat. He quickly snapped his mouth shut after that, focusing on taking off his armor to reveal something passably civilian.

HR.

"Morning Sousuke," Mao yawned, sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of what may have been cereal in front of her. "See you're back to normal."

The boy nodded. "Yes, the hot bath helped," he agreed.

"Oh yeah, having your gender changed, about as easy to get over as the flu, huh?" Kurz mumbled, from where he was sitting at the surveillance station, an earphone against his ear. "Hey, the Angel's up."

"How long do we have until she heads to school?" Mao asked, looking over.

"I dunno, but I hope the shower's soon," Kurz grinned lecherously, turning back to the screens and moving the other earphone to his ear.

"You.." Mao growled, her eyebrow twitching, before she bolted up. "Now I remember why I said I'd be the one to do this in the mornings, give me that!" What she didn't notice, as she went over to slap her squad mate up side the head, was that she'd nudged the table slightly with her foot, sending her glass of orange juice tumbling.

Sousuke immediately reached out to grab the glass before it could hit the ground, and ended up with an arm covered in it for his trouble. "C'mon Sergeant Major, I'm just gunna listen to her wonderful singing voice in the shower!" Kurz objected, loudly, before the two of them were interrupted by Sousuke.

The short redhead considered screaming in horrified annoyance for about half a second, before discarding that thought and simply saying "I believe I will have a problem during school this morning."

"Um... I thought we fixed this," Mao noted, worried.

Sousuke nodded. "Maybe the hot water will work again?" she questioned, adjusting her clothing so that they wouldn't hinder her much.

"Maybe," Mao said doubtfully. "This place heats up pretty slowly in the mornings," she shivered, remembering the shower she'd tried to take only an hour earlier, "but you should go run a bath while I try and see if there are any clothes that'll fit you."

"I dunno, she looked pretty cute in the school uniform yesterday," Kurz quipped, before he heard the sound of a click, and turned to see the end of a gun barrel. "Okay, it was a joke! Humor, you know?"

As the woman wielding the weapon lowered it and turned to leave the room, quickly followed by the other, he sighed in relief. "Dodged that one," he muttered, leaning back to listen to Kaname's humming and scrubbing. Ah yes, his life was currently rather go... He trailed off in that thought, as he heard a clicking sound, and began cycling through the cameras mounted outside of the target's house.

Getting one that was angled correctly, he zoomed it in to see a tall figure opening the door, and entering the apartment. "Sergeant Major?" he called down the hall, and Mao poked her head into the room.

"Yeah?" she asked, holding a sports bra in one hand.

"We've got an unknown in the Angel's apartment," Kurz noted.

"Great, can you get an ID?" Mao asked, walking over next to him and squinting into the monitor.

"Not sure," he admitted, right before they both heard the front door slam.

"What was that?" Mao asked, before her eyes widened. "Sousuke?"

HR.

Ranma hummed to himself, checking the note he'd been given as he walked down the street. He'd thought that he recognized the address before, but hadn't been able to figure out why. Now, though, he was able to recognize the apartments. "Hmm, maybe I should go visit her," he thought. "Bet she'd like someone to come around and see her every once in a while. Too bad I don't have any souvenirs this time."

Shrugging, he checked his watch, noting that he had three hours before he really had to meet with the team in the area. Turning into the lobby of one of the buildings, he pulled out a key ring with five keys on it, an used one of them to unlock the front entrance door.

As he made his way up to her apartment, he could feel his skin crawling, as though he was being watched. Shaking his head, he tried to ignore the feeling. He'd gotten to be really paranoid over the years, but tried not to show it while doing civilian activities. This, of course, was likely a mistake, but he'd worry about that after he'd been shot. Again.

Opening the apartment door and stepping in, he noted that the place was creepily clean, as always. "Am I sure she's not Kasumi's kid?" he muttered to himself before calling out, "Kaname, it's Uncle Ranma!" Making his way to the kitchen, he heard the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. Noting the bento box that had been left out, he began to prepare food to put in it.

As he was slipping in a couple of cookies from a bag on top of the refrigerator, he heard the distinct sound of a pistol's safety being released. "Aw, crap," he complained, turning around to see a startlingly familiar set of cold blue eyes staring into his.

Noting the red hair, short stature and ill-fitting boys school uniform, Ranma took a guess. "You aren't Sousuke Sagara, are ya?"

"Sousuke?" a female voice asked, from the bathroom door across the room, as Kaname Chidori stood there with a bath towel wrapped around her body.

"I repeat, aw crap," Ranma muttered.

END.


	2. Chapter 1: Explosive Feline

Okay, everyone, there IS actually some new content here for the readers from Weebee's account. It starts when Kaname gets home. Thanks, and please R&R.

Chapter 1: Explosive Feline.

Kaname's eyes widened as she stepped out of the bathroom, noting that there were two people in her kitchen, one holding a gun on the other. She'd started to wrap up her shower when she'd heard someone entering the apartment, though it had taken a couple of minutes to get to the point where she wouldn't drip everywhere.

"You aren't Sousuke Sagara, are ya?" the taller, male figure asked, causing Kaname almost to drop her towel.

"Sousuke?" she asked.

"I repeat, aw crap," the taller man said, causing Kaname to turn towards him.

"Uncle Ranma? What are you doing here?" she asked, confused.

"Uh, Kaname-chan, a little busy with the gun wielding mercenary at the moment," Ranma said, wondering if he could take the gun before it could be fired, or if he'd end up getting yelled at for putting bullet holes in the walls.

"Wait, Sousuke's a mercenary?" Kaname asked, blinking.

"Of course I'm not a mercenary, Chidori-san," the girl holding the gun said, immediately. "Now, you, please identify yourself or I will fire."

"Um, you really want me to do that with a civilian standin right over there?" Ranma asked, rolling his eyes. "And by the way, great way of keeping up your cover."

"Point," the redhead agreed. "We will discuss this outside."

Ranma nodded, turning for the door, before Kaname moved forward and grabbed his arm. "Uncle Ranma, what in the world is going on here? Why is that girl from the changing room yesterday trying to shoot you, and why are the both of you pretending she's Sousuke?"

"The girls changing room?" Ranma asked, raising an eyebrow. "Okay, I've been in some pretty embarrassing situations before, and I'll let you explain, but if the explanation isn't good..."

"Sir," Sousuke looked very uncomfortable now. "Outside, now."

"All right, I'm coming," Ranma said, turning towards Kaname for a moment. "Sorry, I gotta take care of this."

"But I..." the girl started, before Ranma shook his head.

"Shouldn't you be at school now?" he asked, gesturing at a clock on the wall, and causing the girl's eyes to widen. Holding out a mostly packed bento, he nodded as she grabbed it, and charged out the door.

"If Sousuke's not at school today, we'll be having a little talk, Ms. Mercenary!" she called, right before the door slammed, causing the aforementioned person to gulp.

"Five seconds now," Ranma muttered, as she charged back in, ran into her bedroom and slammed its door behind her.

Sousuke just blinked in confusion, until Ranma grabbed her arm and lead her out of the apartment, incidentally removing her gun in the process.

HR.

Kaname's mind was racing. She hadn't been kidding about what she would do if Sousuke was not in class that day, and, low and behold, there was an empty seat. That girl, or Sousuke, had better watch out, because she had her, or his, number now.

Granted, she knew it was possible for guys to turn into girls, two of her uncles did, after all, but it still wasn't something you expected. She'd have to have some hot and cold water on hand for her little 'talk.' Still, something as trivial as the curse could wait. There were much more important things to discuss.

Without really thinking about it, she preformed the morning class ritual. "Stand, bow, sit."

The thing that most needed discussion was that Uncle Ranma had called the girl a mercenary. The girl had, of course, denied it, but she had then immediately threatened her uncle with a gun. And then Uncle Ranma had mentioned the girl's cover having been blown. All in all, it was rather suspicious. Yes, she was definitely going to be questioning that military otaku, assuming that that was all he or she was, something she was beginning to-

"Miss Chidori, are you all right?" the teacher asked. "You seem to have been somewhere else for most of the lesson."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Kagurazaka," Kaname replied, blushing with embarrassment. "I'll try to pay more attention."

"Please do so. You wouldn't want to be a bad influence on the other students, would you?" the teacher asked rhetorically.

"No, ma'am," Kaname said quietly.

HR.

"So, that was a disaster of epic proportions," Kurz observed, as he leaned back in the monitoring chair, taking his headset off.

"Would you be serious for once in your life?" Mao grumbled. "I've got a feeling we've just been compromised to the target, and apparently our special expert's her uncle."

"Wait, that Ranma guy's our expert on what's happened to Sousuke?" the blond asked, surprised.

"Apparently so, he's from Intelligence. He's also part of the only covert ops team on the boat," Mao explained, setting down a file she'd picked up after hearing the name and thinking that it sounded familiar.

"Well, at least he and Sousuke are coming back... Damn, she's hot!" Weber proclaimed, as he leaned forward quickly enough that the chair gave creaking protest.

"What are you talking about?" Mao asked, looking over his shoulder, to see two redheads, one obviously older than the other, entering their apartment building. "That's... actually kind of creepy."

"Huh?" Kurz asked.

"Well look, the hair's the exact same color. So's the skin, actually. Lemme guess, that's Ranma, after he got splashed?" the Sergeant Major speculated. At Kurz' nod, she shrugged. "It's just, the resemblance is... creepy."

"I don't know," Kurz disagreed. "She's a lot taller, and her chest's not quite as big... or is that just the proportions being off?"

"You do know that was originally a guy, right?" Mao asked, sounding somewhat disgusted.

"Pretty girls are pretty girls," Weber said casually. "Besides, I don't hold it against you for being a complete hard ass."

Mao's eyebrow twitched, but she left that alone. "All right, well keep your tongue in your mouth, we've got some cleaning up to do, and it's starting to look like the conflict of interest paperwork on this mission's going to be legendary."

Weber groaned. "Thanks for reminding me," he grumbled darkly.

HR.

"Okay, so let me get this straight," Kurz started, as he, Mao, Sousuke and Ranma were sitting around the table in the apartment they were using as a home base. "So, Sousuke's turning into a girl with cold water and a guy with hot should be impossible for more reasons than just common sense?"

"Remember, common sense isn't," Mao smirked. "Besides, we pilot giant robots, we really shouldn't talk."

"Yeah," Ranma nodded. "The place that gives those curses was destroyed about twenty years ago, so unless some random high school girl was carrying around twenty year old Chinese bottled water, I don't know how he picked up the curse."

"I dunno, I found a bottle of water in the mess at boot camp that'd been there for at least forty years," Kurz offered.

"Well, unless we can find that water and test it, we really won't know, but I doubt its Jusenkyo." Ranma shrugged.

"So, if the water that caused this was destroyed, are there any cures?" Sousuke asked, from where he was sitting across from Ranma, his arms crossed.

"There's the spring of drowned man, but the whole valley was flooded, so it's gone as well." Ranma admitted, looking apologetic. "I haven't really been looking all that hard for the past few years, but no one's found anything else that'll do it."

"I see," Sousuke said, and nodded. "Then I will have to find a way to incorporate the curse into my set of tactical capabilities."

Ranma blinked. "You're, um, not upset?" he asked, a little creeped out as the brown eyed boy stared levelly at him.

"No, should I be?" Sousuke asked.

Ranma looked oddly over at Mao and Weber, who just shrugged. "Well, most people are," he offered. "I tried to make my old man into a panda skin rug when I first got cursed."

"I don't know, adapt and overcome is a pretty positive attitude," Mao, the only marine in the room, offered with a grin.

"I suppose I can help him act a little more feminine when a girl, if he doesn't mind it," Ranma offered. "I've gotten pretty good at switching back and fourth over the years."

"Until we get additional orders, I suppose that's what we'll have to do, and keep Kurz on lookout for Miss Chidori in the meantime," Mao said, and then wondered precisely why Ranma's eyes were narrowing.

"Yeah, about that," the intelligence operative asked, "Why in the hell are you watching my niece?"

"Erm, we have no idea," Kurz admitted. "We were just told to keep her safe."

"Great," Ranma mumbled. "If the Amazons are out to kidnap her or something..." He shook his head, dismissing that thought.

"What was that about Amazons?" Mao asked, curiously.

"It's not important," Ranma said quickly. "Now, Sagara, if you wanna be able to go back to school by tomorrow, we should get to work."

"Right," Sousuke said, nodding and standing, Ranma quickly following.

"Did my question just get brushed off?" Mao asked, caught half way between annoyed and confused.

HR.

"Hmm, interesting," a grey haired girl said, as she sat in a high backed chair, reading over a sheaf of reports. "So they have no idea how it happened?"

"No, Captain. It just suddenly manifested yesterday afternoon. Fortunately it seems that it is this 'Jusenkyo,' rather than something more permanent," a man standing next to her reported, reading over his own paperwork.

"Do we have any information on how Mr. Sagara is taking this?" the girl asked, concerned.

"Apparently he's taking it in stride, as usual, Sergeant Major Mao reports that he is training with Sgt. Ranma to get used to the effects of the change," the man said.

The grey haired girl was silent for a moment, before grasping the end of her long plait in one hand, and bringing it to brush along her lower jaw. "Sergeant. Ranma, he's the one who obtained the data on Russian supply movements?" At the man's nod, she smiled. "Well, if Mr. Sagara's willing to continue the mission, and Mr. Ranma is going to help him adjust, we should make it easier for them both to carry out their tasks."

Flipping through the report, the girl took note of several images and smiled. Lieutenant Commander Kalinin, could you prepare three more false identification packets? One for a seventeen year old female, and two for Sousuke's parents?"

The man she identified as Kalinin looked confused for a moment before realization struck, and amusement crossed his face mixed with something unreadable. "Yes Ma'am, I will file the required paperwork immediately," he answered, turning.

HR.

"Okay, how did he pass for a normal school boy?" Ranma asked, as he sat at the Urzu group's kitchen table, watching Sousuke march around like he was on maneuvers.

"Well, he actually failed pretty miserably at that," Kurz admitted, "but they all assumed he was a military otaku."

"Ah, so they all did their best to ignore him," Ranma nodded. "Half decent tactic, but it probably isn't gunna work when he's female. At the least, she'll have every nerd in school trying to ask her out on a date."

Sousuke seemed to twitch for a moment, and Mao rolled her eyes. "That would interfere with carrying out the mission," the military boy noted.

Ranma sighed, slapping his forehead. "All right, go get some cold water and we can start," he ordered, wondering how he'd been roped into training someone to act like a girl. "I wonder how much I'm gunna get paid for this," he muttered, as Sousuke left the room.

"So you know, if you need a guy for demonstration purposes, I'd be glad to help out," Kurz suggested, from where he was leaning against the wall near the kitchen door.

Ranma's eyebrow twitched, as he began to think that he didn't like this guy. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere?" he asked, irritably.

"Huh?" Kurz asked, blinking, before his eyes widened. "Crap, Angel!" he yelped, dashing out the door.

"Angel?" Ranma asked, raising an eyebrow.

"The codename was his idea," Mao clarified. "I was going to go for Bluebird, but you made a good point. Kurz and I should get back to work."

Ranma nodded, and groaned as he saw Sousuke marching back out of the kitchen. "You shouldn't walk like that," he noted. At Sousuke's confused expression, he clarified, "Not only does it look weird for a girl, your back's gunna hate you for it in a few weeks."

The short redhead nodded, before beginning to move in an odd, cockeyed gate that sent her staggering vaguely to the right. "What the hell is that?" Ranma demanded, trying not to burst out into laughter.

"I am attempting to emulate the way Sergeant Major Mao walks while not acting professionally," Sousuke responded succinctly.

"You mean when she's totally smashed?" the older Jusenkyo victim asked.

"Affirmative," Sousuke agreed, right before an empty beer can smacked her in the side of the head, and she looked over to see her commanding officer giving her a dirty look from her surveillance terminal.

"Fine, I'll show you," Ranma mumbled, getting up and going to get a glass of cold water.

HR.

The pig stomped down the corridor, as much as a pig could stomp, its little piggy hooves making soft clinking sounds that echoed along the metallic walls. Every few seconds it would let off a bwee that sounded sort of like an irritated mutter, and turn, sometimes to hop over a hatch's lip and sometimes to realize that it had tried to walk through a solid bulkhead.

At this moment, the pig wasn't having a terribly good day, or week, for that matter. For one, it was a pig when it would really rather not be, and for another it had managed to get itself more lost than it had ever been before. It was pretty sure that it had ended up wandering onto an aircraft carrier at one of the military bases or something, but so far had been unable to get off of the ship again.

"Bwee," it muttered dispiritedly, leaning against the lip of a closed hatch, and stopping to rest its tired legs. It stayed there for a moment, thinking that perhaps it shouldn't have reacted so violently to what had happened to it a week ago, but it was traumatizing, and the pig felt that its anger was fully justified.

As the animal was about to pull itself back to its feet, the hatch swung open above it, and it looked up to see a pair of female legs, trailing up to a skirt. "I'm going to go off duty for a few hours," a voice that seemed far too young to be on a ship like this said.

As the girl's foot came down on the other side of the hatch lip, the pig's eyes widened and it scrambled out of the way with a panicked oink, causing the girl to look down. "Oh! What in the world?"

"Is there something wrong, Madam Captain?" a male voice asked from beyond the hatch, and the girl shook her head, bending down to scoop the pig up in her arms.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Commander, is there a reason we have a piglet aboard?"

"A piglet?" The male voice asked, before the animal in question caught sight of a brown haired man looking down at it speculatively. "I don't think we loaded any of those... Maybe he's part of the galley's supplies?"

"Bweeeheee!" the piglet yelled, struggling violently in the girl's arms for a moment, before she rested a hand on its head and patted it gently.

"Commander, look what you've done! You shouldn't frighten such a cute little thing!" she proclaimed, continuing to pat the animal as it calmed down.

"No, of course not, my apologies Madam Captain," the man said with a soft smile.

"Hmm, well he shouldn't be wandering the ship, he could get hurt," the girl decided. "I think I'll take him with me to my quarters and keep him as a pet until we figure out where he's supposed to be."

"Ma'am, perhaps you should get him checked out at Sickbay first?" another man, this one with grey hair, suggested.

"Oh, yes, thank you Mr. Kalinin," the girl nodded, turning and walking away, idly toying with the pink bandanna wrapped around the pig's neck.

As she went out of sight, one of the bridge techs chuckled. "You know, sometimes I forget her age, then something like that happens and I remember again."

"Hey, it's a lot better than most sub captains," another of the techs countered. "Remember a few months ago, with the shore leave at the amusement park?"

"Do you think she has all the stuffed animals the A.S. pilots got for her?" the first man returned, before the brown haired man cleared his throat, reaching up and adjusting his royal navy baseball cap. Both techs looked sheepish for a moment, before going back to work.

HR.

"But... that was a home run. I know it was," Kaname nearly whined as she walked back into the school from their gym class, Kyoko at her side.

"It's okay," Kyoko said soothingly. "I believe you. The ball must have bounced off of the air, right?"

"This is all Sousuke's fault!" the blue haired girl exclaimed.

Kyoko looked puzzled for a moment before adjusting her glasses and asking, "How could a military otaku like him pull off something like that? He's not even here today."

"I'm not really sure what his deal is, but my Uncle Ranma came over today and that redhead from yesterday showed up and held him at gun point!"

"That doesn't prove anything. Just that there's a psycho girl around," the brunette commented.

"Yeah, but Uncle Ranma asked if she was Sousuke, and her denial was a little off."

"But you said she was a girl," Kyoko pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean much. I mean, my uncles turn into girls all the time."

"Um, Kaname?" Kyoko asked. "Have you painted your apartment without opening the windows again?

"No! I'm serious," Kaname said. "Besides, it was only the one time."

"I don't believe you, so I'm going with you after school!" the excitable girl declared. "I want pictures!"

As the doors that lead into the school closed behind the class, an invisible arm slave sulked. "She hit me. She hit me right in the eye."

"Aw, grow up Weber, it's not like it could have hurt you," Mao's voice came through from the home base.

"Yeah, but still, it's gunna take me hours to check and make sure the thing's lined up right before I'll be able to shoot straight again," the sniper muttered, irritably. Mao was about to respond, when a tremendous crash resounded from somewhere behind her, and Sousuke's cursed form's voice could be heard muttering "I can continue."

HR.

Looking back, Mao's eyebrow rose as she saw Sousuke sprawled out on the floor, the table knocked over behind her, and a dazed look on her face. "Okay, I think we can stop with the walking training for now," Ranma muttered, looking down on her. "Just don't wear high heels."

"Affirmative," Sousuke moaned, pulling said footwear off and dragging herself to her feet with Ranma's offered hand.

"So, no party dresses for Sousuke-chan, huh?" Mao asked, with a smirk that vanished as soon as she saw Sousuke looking at her steadily. "You know, teasing people is a lot more fun when you can find a topic they'll react to."

"Oh, there's some stuff to tell him that'll get a reaction," Ranma noted, causing Sousuke to look nervous. "Have you been given the talk?"

Mao blinked for a moment, and then her eyes widened. "Wait, you mean you..."

Ranma nodded. "Based on how long I stay in cursed form," he shrugged.

Sousuke looked between her wincing commanding officer and her trainer. "This talk isn't the anti-interrogation course, is it?" she asked with obvious trepidation.

"Um, I don't suppose you could..." Ranma asked, looking over at Mao.

She raised both hands and waved them around. "Oh no, I'm not going through that hell until and unless I have kids, and that's really not likely to happen."

"Well, um," Ranma started, "Maybe we should... I'll go get..." He trailed off, throwing another desperate glance to Mao, until she inadvertently saved him, as the radio console next to her beeped, and she reached over to put on her headset.

"Urzu 2 here, go ahead," she said, and listened for a moment. "What?" she asked, surprised. "Um, yes, I confirm." She pulled the mic away from her mouth for a moment, and muttered, "Is Captain Testerossa insane?"

Ranma looked mildly interested at this, walking up behind the Sergeant Major as she went pale. "Oh, you heard that, um, just... I'll pass on the order, clear."

"So what was that all about?" the pigtailed man asked, rather relieved that he had an excuse to avoid giving Sousuke the Talk.

"It looks like they feel that you and Sousuke should split off from Sergeant Weber and I," Mao explained. "Something about you already being compromised."

"Makes some sense," Ranma admitted. "So what's the part you thought the Captain was insane for?"

Mao winced at the remembrance of her possible career suicide. "Well, apparently Sousuke's being issued a second identity to correspond with his cursed form, and you are now Mr. Ranma Sagara, and Mrs. Ranko Sagara. They want us to provide a second name for Sousuke as soon as possible."

Ranma blinked. "Wait, so they want me to..." he trailed off.

"They want you and Sousuke to pretend you're a small family, and move in closer to Kaname to provide on site surveillance." Mao explained.

"You know, Kaname knows I'm ronin and don't have any kids," Ranma objected.

"It's not to fool her; she already knows who you are. It's to explain why there's some older guy, and two redheads that look like differently aged clones running around," Mao explained.

Ranma shook his head. "I've been putting off getting a last name to put on files for a few years now," he muttered. "Long as the kid doesn't mind, Sagara's as good as any other."

"I don't believe my parents would have a problem with it, and it is a good tactic to keep a closer eye on the target," Sousuke agreed.

"Was that..." Mao started, before shaking her head. She was relatively sure that Sousuke didn't go in for morbid humor, or any humor for that matter.

"Well, Kaname will be home soon," Ranma started, either not noticing or choosing to pretend not to notice Mao's aborted comment. "Are they giving us funds to rent the apartment or is it coming out of pocket?"

Mao shrugged. "Save the receipts, I guess," she responded, before turning back to the monitors. "And Weber, I guess your optics are working fine if you can use them to peek into the girls change room!"

"Let's go before I have to break your teammate's arm for spying on my niece," Ranma muttered, gesturing for Sousuke to follow him as he headed for the door.

HR.

"I'm telling you, my uncle's sensitive about the curse, he's not just going to demonstrate it so you can take pictures," Kaname griped, as she and Kyoko walked down the street, heading to the former's apartment after school.

"Sounds like someone's making excuses," the brown haired girl said in a sing-song, twirling her digital camera in her right hand casually.

"Kyoko..." Kaname groaned. To tell the truth, she really didn't want the other girl around for several reasons at the moment, and the biggest of them was the distinct possibility that she could get herself shot. She wasn't very knowledgeable about mercenaries, but was inclined to believe that they didn't like getting their pictures taken.

"Don't 'Kyoko' me," the glasses wearing girl objected. "You've been telling stories about your mother and uncles since you came to this school and I want to meet one of them."

"Right," Kaname mumbled, turning into the front entrance of her building, and unlocking the door. 'Why couldn't this be one of those times that she acts like an idiot?' the long haired girl lamented internally.

As the two girls got out of the elevator five minutes later, they saw a rather unusual sight. Sousuke was standing in the hallway, carrying a large black duffel bag, while an older woman with bright red hair was apparently dragging a dresser with very little effort.

"Sousuke!" Kaname declared, dramatically pointing at the boy. "We need to talk!"

"Aren't you being a little over dramatic?" Kyoko asked, blinking at her best friend as she stalked up to the class's newest military fanatic.

Kaname ignored her. "Why weren't you in class today?" she demanded, getting close to the boy's face.

Sousuke froze for a moment, before answering, "I was relocating to my new living quarters."

"Wait, you're moving in here?" Kaname asked, and was surprised as the red haired woman gently lowered the end of her dresser to the ground and stepped forward.

"You're Kaname Chidori, aren't you?" she asked.

"Um," Kaname said, confused. "Did you hit your head or something, Uncle Ranma?"

The woman frowned for a moment, and then moved a hand up to her chin. "Young lady, I may be getting a little older, but I don't look that much like a man, do I?" she asked. "I was going to thank you for helping my daughter yesterday."

"Your... daughter?" Kaname asked.

"Wow, you're getting pretty repetitive, Kaname," Kyoko commented, looking between her friend and the clearly confused older woman. "Sorry about her, she's been babbling all afternoon, something about mercenaries holding her relatives hostage."

"Kyoko!" Kaname exclaimed, her eyes widening.

"What, it's true!" Kyoko justified. "Anyways, I'm Kyoko Tokiwa, sorry about my friend here."

"Traitor," Kaname grumbled under her breath, not sure if she was directing it towards the brown haired girl next to her or the redhead in front of her.

"Nice to meet you Kyoko, Kaname, I'm Ranko Sagara, and you already know Sousuke," the older woman said, pointing at the boy who was just coming out of the apartment across the hall from Kaname's, the bag apparently put inside somewhere.

"Nice to meet you Ma'am," Kyoko said, with a bow that Kaname reluctantly copied. "Do you need any help with your moving?"

"Oh, that's fine, Kyoko-chan," Ranko countered, before Kaname interrupted.

"No, its no big deal, we'll help you out! I've even got some drinks in my place we can all share!" she said, her enthusiasm seeming somewhat forced. "Mrs. Sagara, why don't you come in and help me bring them out while Sousuke and Kyoko keep working?"

"Eh, when did I volunteer for this?" Kyoko protested, but was ignored as Kaname grabbed the Sagara boy's mother by the arm, dragging her into her apartment.

She and Sousuke looked at each other for a moment, not saying anything, before he nodded. "Could you help me pull this dresser in, please?"

"Yeah, sure, I guess," Kyoko shrugged, walking over and setting herself to push the thing when Sousuke lifted. "So," she said, as she shoved against the wooden mass, rather surprised at how heavy it was, "it's kind of funny you're moving in here, because Kaname was talking about you for most of today."

"Really?" Sousuke asked, startled. "Why would she do that?"

"Personally, I think she's flipped... at least, gone a bit more over the deep end than usual, but she seems to think you're a mercenary, and that you change gender," Kyoko giggled.

"That's strange," Sousuke said, and then began to chuckle along with her, though it sounded a little shaky

"Yeah, I know," Kyoko agreed, as Sousuke nudged open the door to his apartment with a foot. "I mean sure you're a little strange," she stopped, realizing what she'd said and blushing. "No offense."

"None taken," Sousuke quickly reassured.

"Right, you're a little strange, but..." she trailed off, and Sousuke looked up at her, concerned.

"Yes?" he asked.

"You know, one thing about her story that does make sense, it would explain why that girl yesterday looked taller to start off with, and you did have a gun or something confiscated that morning," Kyoko contributed, mostly as a joke. She was startled when Sousuke's face went pale, and he dropped the end of the dresser with a thud.

"Uh, that? That was my... sister," he said, quickly.

"Oh right, your mom mentioned that, we apparently helped her with something," Kyoko realized. "Is she going to be coming to school? What's her name? Maybe Kaname and I can help her settle in."

"Uh," Sousuke was sweating bullets now. "She might show up, when time permits, and her name is..."

"Her name is?" Kyoko asked, looking at the boy strangely.

"Her name is..." Sousuke said, putting as many syllables together in his brain as he could, and trying to find a set that he could train himself to respond to quickly. "She's Sora."

"Sora, huh?" Kyoko noted, not sure whether to believe Sousuke, but then again, her only other choice would be to believe Kaname's crazy stories about magical curses, and given that Mrs. Sagara, who seemed pretty normal, had mentioned her daughter as well, Kyoko had to believe at least some of it.

So the question now was, why was Sousuke so nervous? "Hey wait, you aren't used to hanging around girls, are you?" Kyoko asked, snapping her fingers. "That's gotta be it, you were acting all up tight and nervous yesterday. What, did you go to an all boys school or something before this?"

"Um, yes, that's right," Sousuke said, quickly. "Could we please get back to work now?"

Kyoko giggled. "Okay, let's finish up. Where are those guys with the drinks?"

HR.

"What in the world are you doing?" Kaname asked, whirling on Ranma as soon as the door to her apartment had shut completely behind them.

The redhead sighed, reaching up to rub at the bridge of her nose. "Sorry Kaname, but it's complicated."

"How complicated?" Kaname asked. "People in standoffs in my living room complicated?"

"About there, yeah," Ranma agreed, as she walked further into the apartment, slumping down on the couch in the living room.

"So you stood out there and pretended you didn't know who I was?" the teal haired girl demanded angrily.

"Look, Kaname, there are people out there who would recognize me from a description of the curse. They're pretty rare, you know," the Mithril operative explained. "We've been sent out here to keep you safe, and I don't need the people who don't like me coming out to pick a fight."

"Here to keep me safe?" Kaname demanded. "What from?"

"We don't know," Ranma admitted. "We weren't given that information."

"'We?' Who's 'we?' You're talking like you've been sent from some secret spy agency or something." As Kaname saw her uncle, notorious for being unable to lie to anyone he or she cared about, twitch, she blinked. "Um, that was a joke... right?" she asked slowly.

"We aren't spies," the older redhead assured quickly, before continuing on rather sheepishly. "We're a private defense organization." Kaname slapped her forehead, and began shaking her head from side to side. "I got sent in to help Sousuke when he manifested the curse," Ranma continued, trying not to notice what her niece was muttering, something about her mother, blunt objects, and being right.

Standing, the former Saotome looked Kaname straight in the eyes. "I'm sorry, but I really couldn't have told you, and as it is, you really shouldn't know, so don't tell anyone."

"So," Kaname started, her mind running several hundred miles over the legal limit, "you're some lackey sent by my dad to babysit me or something? You're not my uncle?"

"Um... what?" Ranma asked, startled. "No, of course not!" she exclaimed. "I'd rather punch your old man in the jaw than work for him!" She then raised one hand, clamping it over her mouth for a moment. "Erm, don't tell yer Mom I said that," she mumbled sheepishly. "And I'm not technically your uncle, but you knew that already. If they knew I knew you, they never would have assigned me here. Conflict of interests, and everything."

"Oh," Kaname said, her derailing thought process finally grinding to a stop. "Um... oh."

Seeing the shocked expression on the teal haired girl's face, Ranma shook her head. "I'll give ya some time to chew on this, in the meantime, I should probably get out there before Sousuke blows one of the closet doors off."

"Before he..." Kaname started, confused.

"There's a half pound of plastique in his sock drawer," the super-human martial artist rolled her eyes. "He's some sort of fanatic." As if to prove her point, a loud yell rang through from the outside hallway, and Uncle and Niece both broke for the door.

When it opened, they saw Kyoko standing in the hallway, glaring at Sousuke, while something small and grey lay on the ground between them. "What did you do that for?" the dual-pigtailed girl demanded, inadvertently emulating one of Ranma's own signature phrases.

"Sculpting with that is not recommended," Sousuke replied, seriously, pointing at the grey mass on the floor, which Ranma was doing her best not to look at.

"I was only sculpting a little cat," Kyoko complained.

"Then it definitely isn't recommended," Kaname muttered, bending down and grabbing the surprisingly well rendered animal and hiding it behind her back. Her best friend sniffed.

"Well, if you're going to be strange too, I'm going home," she declared. "I'll see you in school tomorrow."

Kaname sighed, staring at the brown haired girl's receding back for a moment before turning and leveling a glare at Sousuke. As he didn't seem to notice, she huffed, turned and entered her apartment, slamming the door behind her.

"What is the matter with Miss Chidori?" Sousuke asked, after a few moments of silence.

Ranma looked at him incredulously for a moment, and then, only to herself, admitted that Akane may have been a bit justified with some of the stuff she'd chucked at his head in Nerima. "I'll tell you later," she decided. "Let's get everything moved in."

"Affirmative," the boy responded, before heading for the elevator.

HR.

In a clean, grey medical room, a dark skinned woman with dreadlocks smiled down at Captain Tessa Testerossa as she placed a small, black pig into her hands. "Ma'am, this is the healthiest pig I've ever seen." She shrugged. "Of course, I haven't seen many live pigs, but they're pretty close to humans in a lot of ways."

The girl nodded, patting the animal on the head. "He doesn't have any diseases that we would have to worry about then, Doctor?"

"None that I could see, of course, you might want to check him out with a vet somewhere, get him fi..." She was half way through the final word when the captain raised a hand for her to stop, and she could have sworn that she heard the animal sigh in relief. "Right..." s said,shrugging. "I've got some information on the feeding of pigs, but I'm pretty sure you can feed him almost anything."

"Thank you," the grey haired girl said, accepting a small sheaf of papers that the doctor held out to her, and turning to leave the room. "I'll get you settled in, and then relax before the operation tonight," she muttered, mostly to herself,

Several moments later, as she was reaching for the panel that would open her bedroom door, the seventeen year old captain heard the intercom crackling to life. "Captain Testerossa to the bridge, please." The girl just barely bit back a curse that she had heard Sergeant Major Mao use a few times, looking down at the pig with an irritated look that it seemed to empathize with before turning to continue down the corridor.

HR.

"Yeash, I told you she was just spacing out again," a young girl with wildly pointed hair muttered, as she looked backwards towards another, who had turned and started wandering down a side street.

"We should go and get her, we don't want her wandering around alone," a taller girl with brown hair and glasses mumbled, preparing to turn around,

"We're gunna be late for the monster movie marathon, though," the wild haired girl objected, "and she said she's going to meet someone."

"Yeah, but we've been around her almost all the time when she wasn't at home, and have you heard of anyone named Sakaki?" the glasses clad girl objected. "C'mon Tomo, we're going to check on her."

"Aw man," Tomo objected. "Yomi, why do you have to be so worried about the small stuff all the time?"

"Maybe if you were a little more worried about the 'small' stuff, you wouldn't have to worry about failing out of school," Yomi grumbled, the two teenagers heading back towards where their friend had turned off into the side street.

As they turned a corner, noting that there was a black van parked at one of the telephone poles, they noticed that there were three rather bulky looking men standing around a short, black haired girl who was staring up at one of them with a dull expression.

"Hey, somethin wrong?" the girl asked, in a slow, Osakan drawl.

"Nothing at all miss," a tall, spiky haired man in a brown trenchcoat responded, in a low voice that the other two girls could barely hear. "You're just going to have to come with us now."

"Would you look at those guys?" Tomo asked, pointing frantically. "I bet that guy's a flasher or something! I'm gunna go kick him in the head!"

Yomi caught her friend by the arm and glared at her. "Are you nuts? He's got to be over six feet tall, and there are two others with him, we should probably call the police."

"Besides," the third girl chipped in, looking over to her two friends and causing the three men surrounding her to look as well. "He's wearin pants and a shirt, I can see 'em from here. Oh, he's got a gun, too. Is that a Makarov?"

"No, it's actually a..." the spiky haired man started, before his cheek twitched and he chuckled. "You know, I like you," he quipped. "Girl, get into the van, now."

"I'm thirsty, can I have a drink of water?" the girl in question asked, looking up at him.

The man rolled his eyes. "Yes, you can have a drink of water," he muttered.

"Hey! We aren't letting Osaka go with a bunch of perverts!" Tomo yelled, stepping forward and pointing dramatically. "So say I, Mythical Detective Tomo Takino!"

"Excuse me?" the spiky haired man asked, drawing a short, mean looking pistol from inside of his jacket and leveling it at the girl.

"Um, she didn't say anything," Yomi said quickly, grabbing Tomo by the arm and pulling her back. She wanted to protect her friend, but had no illusions about their chances versus three large thugs.

"That's what I thought," the man said, putting his weapon back and ushering Osaka towards the van. "Come along now, little Whispered."

The girl nodded, hopping into the vehicle, and the men piled in behind her before driving off. As they did so, Yomi exhaled a massive sigh of relief, and immediately pulled out her cell phone to begin dialing the police.

END.


	3. Chapter 2: TBAMLS

Okay, here we go. First whole new chapter of this story since the rewrite. Again, we'd recommend that if you read it before it was posted on JonaBee, it would be a good idea to reread the last few scenes of last chapter, or you shall be confused.

For all of you who just started reading since the repost, or who already read the last few scenes of chapter 1, please enjoy this new chapter and tell us how you felt about it!

Chapter 2: Tactical Bodyguard Action Metal Locker Stupid.

Kaname tapped her foot on the floor impatiently, studying the note in her hand for a moment. It had been left on her door, scrawled in Ranma's untidy hand, and asked her to wait for Sousuke before heading to school this morning. Stopping her foot tapping, the teal haired girl looked down at her watch. "I've only got twenty minutes," she sighed, before knocking on the apartment door for the second time. When it didn't open then, she reached for it, turning the nob and pushing the door open.

As she stepped into the apartment, she could hear voices, which slowly lead her past the kitchen, where there was a bento prepared, and into the living room, where her uncle was pacing in front of a girl that Kaname barely recognized as Sousuke's female form.

She didn't look much different, though Kaname had gotten very few glimpses of her, and only one in the girls school uniform that she was currently wearing. The hair that he wore in a sort of half-ordered chaos was pulled back by a blue hair band, and styled to look almost cute, and she was holding her hands in front of her body, adopting a very proper and feminine mannerism. As Kaname listened to what was being said, her creeped out factor increased.

"Sergeant Sagara, please repeat the objectives that you have been given!" Ranma barked, in a much harsher tone than his niece had ever heard from him.

"I am to act as a bodyguard to specialist Chidori," Sousuke responded, quickly. "She is an expert on the local culture, terrain, and tactical situation, but possesses minimal combat skills. Also, the enemy is not yet aware of my current appearance, so I am to cause as little disturbance as possible, and request Miss Chidori's assistance in maintaining my cover."

"Threat disposal and countermeasures?" Ranma asked, again in that harsh tone.

"All non-immediate threats are to be reported to Miss Chidori and handled after the situation has been assessed by the two of us. If possible without increasing risk, all immediate threats are to be covertly and non-lethally eliminated." Kaname shivered at these words, more than a little disconcerted that her uncle had apparently spoken them earlier, and that someone no older than herself was repeating them now.

She coughed, not really wanting to get any attention at this point, but knowing that she still needed to get to school, and was relieved when Ranma's shoulders loosened and he turned to her. "We're going to be late for school if we don't go soon," she offered.

Sousuke nodded to her before walking past Ranma and towards the kitchen without a word, picking up her lunch box. Kaname threw a 'what in the world was that about' look to the martial artist, which he just shrugged at before she turned and followed Sousuke out of the room.

When the front door closed behind the two of them, Ranma walked over to the couch he'd helped haul in the night before and slumped down on it, letting himself lean back and look up into the plaster of the ceiling.

He was pretty sure, barring a few insane rivals or love interests, that Sousuke would do all right in school, especially with Kaname to keep an eye on him. That, of course, led him to why the boy and his team had been called out over her, but it was a need to know matter, and at the moment, he saw no need to go break into Mithril's secured offices to find out. Besides, when he'd done so to do a background check on them before he'd joined, the security systems had been nasty, and they would probably be much worse now.

Of course, his current employers' interest in his family wasn't Ranma's only problem, and not the worst given what he knew of the organization's usual motives. His current problem was that a member of his family now knew what he'd been doing for the past fifteen years. He'd been relatively sure that he'd kept the secret from even Nabiki, up until now, and Genma had been the only one with even the vaguest idea, but he was absolutely sure that if Kasumi or Akane found out, he'd end up getting instant worried phone calls, and he didn't want to have to deal with that again.

Sitting up and shaking his head clear of his thoughts, the pigtailed mercenary extracted the crumpled ball that had once been his mission orders from his pocket, reading them over idly until the phone next to the couch beeped, and he reached over to pick it up.

"Hey Kage, this is Urzu 2, just giving you a heads-up, the Angel's on her way to school, and we've got her for the day," Melissa Mao's voice echoed into his ear.

"Confirmed," he replied, right before a second voice cut in on the line.

"Hey, that girl next to her's Sousuke?" Kurz asked, surprised. "She's even walking like a girl, how'd you get him to stop marching around like he's got a bayonet up his backside?"

Ranma shrugged. "He learned pretty fast when I explained that not knowing how to cope with his body or move correctly could be a risk in combat. We ended up staying up until three in the morning trying to find places to stow all of the weapons he wanted to carry in the uniform, though."

The line went dead for a moment, before Mao replied. "You know, with Sousuke, that doesn't surprise me in the least," she deadpanned. "Regardless, you've been ordered to report back home for a status update and a few tests, since we couldn't pull Sousuke out of the field."

The martial artist sighed irritably. "At least this time I've got the excuse that I've gotta be back by five, so they can't lock me in the labs again," he grumbled. "Orders understood, I'll head out. Good luck Urzu group, Kage out."

HR.

The tall, black haired man walked quickly down the dark hall, a woman in a labcoat with her hair tied back in a ponytail following him. "If the girl has been cooperative, what's the problem? Hasn't the treatment proceeded as planned?"

"The treatment's worked," the woman said, her statement a little hesitant. "All of her reading say that she's in the Whispered state, and telling the truth about what she's receiving, but…"

"But then what's the problem? I have other things to take care of right now," the man cut her off, as the two came up to a set of double doors.

"I… think you should see this," the woman suggested, still hesitant and knowing how quick the man was to anger. "When you see what she's been saying, I believe you'll understand."

The man rolled his eyes as he pushed the double doors open, entering a large room with a glass pane in the middle, a young girl sitting on the other side of it and looking out at them with wide, brown eyes. Pulling a chair out in front of a desk that ran in front of the glass, the man picked up a microphone and keyed it. "Hey, girl," he barked.

"Yeah," she asked, rather listlessly, her voice carrying from the other side of the glass.

"I need you to answer some questions," the man said, glancing over to a set of readings on a computer screen nearby which, through a few years dealing with the biometrics systems of Arm Slaves, he was able to read as stress, breathing and heart rate monitors. "What's your name?"

"Osaka," the girl responded, again lazily, but not seeming to hesitate.

The man's eyebrow twitched, and he looked up to the top of the readings page, where her real name, Ayumu Kasuga, was listed. "Are you sure about that?' he deadpanned, carefully watching the readings.

"'s what Tommo called me," the girl replied. "She said 'Your new name is going to be Osaka!' So that's what it is."

The man winced as the girl's voice rose several octaves for her last exclamation, and his microphone squealed. "Don't yell like that again!" he yelled into the mic and smirked widely when he saw her wince and hold her ears. When she was recovered, he tried again. "All right," he started. "I'm going to give you some subjects, and you're going to answer what first comes to mind for each of them."

Behind him, the female scientist handed him a cue card with "Interesting answers" scribbled on top, with a bemused expression. Reading the list over, the man stated, "America?"

"Big place with lots of guns, in' it?" the girl replied.

"Remind me to make that my next vacation spot," her interrogator grumbled. "How about the USSR?"

"Former Soviet Union, fell between 1989 and 1991," the girl replied. The man looked away from her, to her vital sign chart, and then back to the woman.

"Is she serious?" he asked, muting the mic. The woman just shrugged. "Well, our former partners are going to be surprised they ceased to exist ten years ago," he growled, before slapping the button back on. "Japan."

"Well, half the country got flooded by Second Impact, 'cept I'm pretty sure Tokyo was part of that, and I ain't had ta swim to school, so I'm not sure about that," the girl confessed, sheepishly.

The man's eyebrow twitched. "Arm Slaves?" he tried one last time, but was beginning to see what the scientist had warned him about.

"Oh, Arm Slaves, those are big robots, right?" the girl started, and the black haired man slapped the button that would mute her voice, just as she continued, "Arbalist is cool, it's got a Lambda… thing, and it fought this big red thing… Behemoth, I think… it danced pretty good."

"I see what you mean," the girl's newest interrogator said, turning to the female scientist. "I don't even know if there's a point in sending her back to headquarters." He grinned, which caused the woman to step back slightly in spite of herself. "I guess we'll just have to find another one."

HR.

"So, what do you think?" Mao asked, right after being sure to flick off the radio to avoid transmitting her question to their new teammate.

"I think that I really shouldn't drink so much," Kurz said, from where he was peering through a telescopic sight next to his commanding officer. "This hallucination's lasted two and a half days solid, now."

The dark haired woman rolled her eyes. "You're not gunna wake up, Weber," she noted. "None of my drunken nightmares are anywhere near this strange. What I meant is what do you think of our new friend over there."

The Urzu group's sniper shrugged dismissively. "Intel, female form's pretty enough, want him outta here as soon as he's done 'training' Sousuke so we can reverse the damage."

"Ah, don't like him then, huh?" The Sgt. Major commented, leaning back and propping her feet up on the surveillance monitors, which wouldn't be used on the target's trip to school. "He doesn't seem so bad for a dedicated spook."

"You mean like the guy who hung around with us for a week and reported all of our most minor safety or procedure violations to command?" Kurz snorted. "We'll see."

"Yeah, but that guy'd be a jerk no matter what division he was in," Mao disagreed.

The blond remained silent for a moment, before muttering, "I wonder what they're saying?"

"Hmm?" Mao asked, straightening and dropping her feet to the floor.

"The target's chatting with Sousuke," the sniper said, adjusting a nob on the side of his scope. "Can't get a good enough look to read their lips."

"It's probably not important," the dark haired woman said, quickly. "Besides, don't you need to get to your A.S. soon so you can cover them?"

"Oh, right," the blond said, backing away from the scope and heading for the door, while Mao concealed a grin.

HR.

"Why are you doing that?" Kaname burst out, as Sousuke's eyes swept back and fourth across the street, and she knew that the redhead would likely turn around and look at something behind them in a few moments. It wasn't actually very noticeable, but she'd been watching the other ever since they'd left the apartment building, and the pattern was starting to become evident.

"I am checking the area for threats," the boy turned girl said, matter-of-factly.

"Right," Kaname mumbled, reminded of why she had been watching Sousuke all this time. "You're seriously some sort of mercenary?" she asked, looking around to ensure that no one was close enough to hear her making a fool of herself. When Sousuke nodded, she shook her head. "But, you're my age, I mean, don't you have to be eighteen just to join the military, or something?"

"I started fighting when I was very young," the redhead said.

"Oh," Kaname said, and things fell silent for a moment, before she continued, "Sousuke?"

"Sora," the shorter girl corrected, almost absently. At Kaname's confused look, she continued, "My two forms have separate identities, since apparently I gave signs of my purpose two days ago, and any association with my normal form in school could compromise my ability to protect you."

"Oh," Kaname said, again. It seemed that she had been saying that a lot lately, but it was the only thing she could really think of. Of course, on the bright side, she had gotten an answer to at least one of her questions, that of why Sousuke was a girl, but given that she had been told he'd only found out about the curse two days ago, he did seem to be taking it disturbingly well.

"Miss Chidori," Sousuke said a moment later, deciding that since Kaname had asked first, she could as well. "I was told by Sergeant Ranma to ask your assistance in modifying my behavior to be less suspicious, could you give me a preliminary briefing before we get to school?"

"Sure, I guess," Kaname started, knowing what she'd heard earlier, but still a little surprised at the request. "And stop with the Miss Chidori stuff, okay? If we're walking to school together, you may as well call me Kaname."

Sousuke nodded, before she suddenly turned her head to the side, just as a loud popping sound echoed through the air. Kaname was about to ask what was wrong when she was tackled to the ground, hitting with a loud "Oof," and the other girl rolled off of her and up to her knees, drawing a pistol from somewhere in her blouse.

"Why the heck did you do that?" the teal haired girl yelled, indignantly, beginning to pull herself to her knees.

"Stay down," Sousuke hissed. "Gunfire."

"Gunfire?" Kaname asked, in a disbelieving tone, but lowered herself back to the ground nonetheless. Taking a quick look around, she noted that the two were a few dozen feet from the school's front entrance, and that no one seemed to have noticed Sousuke's gun, as they were all staring into the yard, where a man in a blue uniform was laying on the ground, holding one leg.

"I don't think it's aimed at us, now put away that gun before someone sees it!" she whispered to the redhead, who reluctantly did so a moment later. As the two got up, and Kaname winced at the slight stinging of a scraped knee, Kyoko ran out of the yard and directly toward them.

"Kaname!" she yelled, before getting closer and lowering her voice. "I told you you shouldn't have thrown that gun in the garbage!"

"What?" the Chidori girl asked, not quite understanding.

"Remember, the one you took off of the girl in the change room?" Kyoko reminded, before she was interrupted.

"You threw away my gun?" Sousuke asked, actually sounding a little offended.

"Oh, you're here too," Kyoko said, laughing nervously as she realized that everything she'd said had been overheard. "Um, Sora, right?"

The shorter girl nodded, but didn't respond verbally, instead turning to Kaname. "Why would you throw away that gun? Not only is it a safety violation, but it was a perfectly functional piece of equipment."

Kaname winced, suddenly realizing why Kyoko had brought that up right at the moment, as she saw one of the school's janitorial staff being wheeled out of the yard. "Can we not talk about this right now?" she asked, nervously.

"I will be asking about this later," Sousuke reassured, internally rather thankful that it would be very hard to trace the gun that had most likely been confiscated back to him.

"Maybe some good can come out of this and they'll cancel school," Kyoko offered, tentatively. When she got a glare from Kaname, she raised one hand. "Hey, he only got a gash across the leg, the bullet didn't actually go in, and a day off would be a good time to develop my pictures." As Kaname and even 'Sora' gave her dubious looks and the bell rang, seemingly to spite her, the pigtailed girl sighed and the three headed into the building.

HR.

Sousuke stood in front of the class, feeling vaguely as though there was a sniper rifle aimed at the center of her forehead. Two days before, she hadn't understood the importance of the situation she now found herself in, her first impression giving her a tactical advantage in social situations, as Ranma had called it, but now she did, and seeing Kaname looking apprehensively at her from her seat in the middle of the class made things many times worse.

The last time she'd felt like this was when holding her first rifle several years ago, and it bothered her greatly. Gulping, she decided to get it over with, and began to speak in a slow, methodical fashion. "Hello, my name is Sora Sagara. My brother and I transferred here from China several days ago, when our parents were assigned to the military base in Nerima, and I am happy to meet you all."

As the class processed what she'd said, the Mithril operative wished very much that she could see instant results, as she would in combat, but somehow doubted that someone was going to slump to the ground with a bullet wound from a simple introduction. "So, is that why your brother acts so weird?" One girl piped up, from the front of the room.

"Weird?" Sousuke asked, confused.

"Yeah, like rattling off the stats of his toy gun, or reading Arm Slave magazines," the girl continued.

Sousuke opened her mouth, but had no idea what to say. She honestly couldn't see anything strange about that. After all, they had asked him what he was interested in, but before she could formulate a response, she was saved. "Hey, that's not very nice, is it?" Kaname broke in. "You shouldn't talk about the poor guy like that when he's not around to defend himself." The girl in the front row blushed, sitting down, and Sousuke nodded to Kaname, gratefully.

"Well, yes," the teacher said, when there were no more questions a moment later. "Miss Sagara, how about you sit in the seat behind your brother's, the second one next to the window there."

Sousuke nodded simply, moving over to the table, though her ears pricked up when she heard her current name being whispered by a few students. She tried to listen and hear what they were saying, but it was rather difficult, as the whispers were being drowned out by the general noise of the classroom.

Frowning somewhat worriedly, she sat in the seat she had been pointed to, and withdrew a small hand mirror to be able to observe the class without looking as though she was doing it. She'd gotten the technique from Kurz, though he'd been slapped when he had been about to tell her some other, apparently useful, ways of using it.

"All right, class. Today we will begin covering the Edo period. now, I'm sure most of you know at least something about it, so let's review..." the teacher began, though Sousuke was only paying her a small amount of attention, and Kaname only a little more.

HR.

Kaname stood, her arms crossed and a dark glare on her face, and unwilling to move. "No way," she said, resolutely, shaking her head.

"But Kaname, it is important that I stay with you as much as poss…" Sousuke started, before the blue-black haired girl shook her head again. "But my mission," the redhead continued again, only to get another shake.

"Your 'Mission' doesn't mean I'm going to let you into a change room full of naked girls, including me!" Kaname snarled, irritably. "Now Gym starting in five minutes, and if I see you in that locker room, so help me, I'll throw a bucket of hot water at you! Got it?"

The shorter girl sighed. "It appears I have no choice," she noted. "I will change in the rest rooms."

"Good," Kaname huffed, right before Sousuke seemed to pull a small, cylindrical object from somewhere and handed it to her. "What's… this?"

"It's a flashbang grenade," The sergeant said matter-of-factly. "The light it emits and noise it makes disorient attackers. Also, if you need me, the noise will alert me to it."

"Uh, thanks?" Kaname hazarded, tucking the small device into one pocket and turning to the door that she had been blocking, entering the girls locker room. Sousuke turned away as well, heading for a nearby washroom, her Gym clothes under one arm. At the moment, she wasn't really sure that coming to school as a girl had been the wisest course of action. It was true that she'd been able to stay closer to Kaname, but that also had something to do with the taller girl's knowledge of at least some of the situation.

In other ways, the day had been markedly more irritating than his first, as she seemed to be talked to much more than he had, and thinking of at least reasonably polite responses that amounted to "I can't talk about myself" was getting tiresome. Along with that, she had found that her current form lent her one, very large, disadvantage. She was short. Ridiculously so, in fact, at approximately four feet and eleven inches, and she'd lost sight of Kaname several times in crowds mostly due to this fact.

She frowned darkly, turning down the hall that lead to the only bathroom she knew of, as she saw a shadowed form flitting around one corner, and looking rather suspicious. Abruptly, she charged after the form, covering the hall in a distance eating run, but the shadow was now gone, vanished into one of the classrooms, and by the time she searched them all, class would have begun and the figure likely escaped.

Turning back to the hall, where her and Kaname's lockers were, she noticed something, creeping up to the small, aluminum locker door. "A slip of paper?" she muttered, poking the tiny fold that poked out of one hinge. Studying the paper intently, she recalled that it hadn't been there when she had gotten her gym shorts. Nodding decisively to herself, the redhead began to prepare.

HR.

"Where the heck is he?" Kaname Chidori muttered, as she stomped down the hall, carrying her gym things over one shoulder. She'd waited through the entire gym class, and Sousuke hadn't shown up. She'd felt a little like she'd been watched, but hadn't been able to see anything. She really couldn't figure it out, actually. The mercenary had been playing the role of a quiet school girl rather well all day, and Kaname had no idea why she would change tactics now.

For a brief moment, the girl let herself think that, just maybe, whatever it was Sousuke had been looking for had happened during gym class and he was off having some John Woo style gunfight off in the bowels of the school somewhere. She couldn't help but laugh then, as the mental image of a male Sousuke, a pistol in each hand, diving through a classroom door and firing while inexplicable doves flew in the background entered her mind's eye.

Her laughing fit abruptly ended, as she caught sight of the lockers, some sort of small assembly of clamps and fishing line hooked onto 'Sora's,' and the girl herself hunkering behind a garbage can. "What the…" Kaname exclaimed, just as the other saw her.

"Kaname, get behind something," Sousuke called. The teal haired girl looked between the redhead and the lockers for a moment, before shrugging and walking over to Sousuke's trash can.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, looking down at the crouching other girl.

"My locker has been tampered with. I would normally pre-detonate the locker, along with whatever has been placed into it, but have been ordered to use more covert methods. I am about to open the locker remotely," Sousuke explained, and Kaname looked down to see her holding the end of a fishing line that stretched back to the strange assemblage of parts on the locker door.

"Have you been setting this up all gym class?" the taller girl asked, uncertainly. At Sousuke's nod, she groaned. "That's just stupid, no one's going to plant a bomb in your locker!"

"You can never be too careful," Sousuke said, looking at the taller girl with a look in her eyes that actually had Kaname gulping. "I would recommend you take cover."

The more normal of the two actually found herself hunkering down behind the trash can with Sousuke before she really realized what was going on, and biting one finger nail as the other held up her hand, tugging sharply on the fishing line. Abruptly, there was a snap from the locker, and the door creaked slowly open. As it did so, Kaname caught herself holding her breath, until she saw the perfectly normal contents within, and the piece of notebook paper jammed into the crack at the hinges.

"You wasted an hour, and a perfectly good gym class over this?" the teal haired girl grumbled, staring daggers at the mercenary, both for the stupidity of the action and her actually somewhat believing it.

"It seemed like a legitimate threat," Sousuke countered. "Besides, why would anyone stick a piece of paper into my locker?"

"It's a note, you…" Kaname started, before biting back her next words and standing, stomping over to the locker. "It says that someone would like to meet you in the back field, and…" the girl's voice trailed off as she realized what the note was, and she snorted. "You've got an admirer! All this over a love letter?" It was at about that point that the stupidity of the situation got to her, and she began to laugh hysterically.

END.

Note: Sorry if the ending paragraph seemed a little non-end-ish, but it was only after getting this far that we realized the next few scenes weren't at all suitable for ending the chapter on, and we would end up having to write another chapter's worth to get there.

This may seem like a good thing, but that also would have meant another week or two of working before publication, which we're sure none of us wanted, so please enjoy this, Kaname and Sousuke's first real day of school together.

Well, there hasn't been any major structural damage, and no one's jumped into a swimming pool from the third floor... seems more peaceful than both of the source continuities, doesn't it?

Anyhow, shutting up. Please R&R.


	4. Chapter 3: And A Feather Duster

Well, we've apparently gotten off of our collective duffs again to produce for you people a chapter. Hope you enjoy it, and don't forget to R&R.

Chapter 3: And A Feather Duster.

"Are we done yet?" the glare leveled at the researcher as she stood, looking down at a set of readouts on a computer screen would likely have peeled paint at a hundred meters.

"Just a moment, Sergeant," the woman said, apparently unwilling to be hurried, as she wrote several numbers down from the readout of her guinea pig... patient's heart rate monitors. The patient herself was standing in the middle of a small, cylindrical bay to the side of the Tuatha de Danann's sickbay, several wires hooked up over her body. As she was about to ask the researcher if she was finished one more time, a vent opened up above her, dumping a small amount of warm water over her head.

"That's it, I think we're done," the martial artist turned mercenary growled, having gotten rather tired of this after the first five changes, over two hours ago.

"But in just a few more tries, I may be able to isolate the electromagnetic..." the scientist started, before she noted that her equipment was starting to beep, and that the Cirlian aura camera she'd rigged up was starting to show the man in front of her glowing a deep, roiling blue that extended about a foot from his body. "Um, we're done?" She tried, hopefully.

"Thank you," Ranma said, beginning to expertly remove the medical sensors, and stepping out of the small chamber. He considered asking the woman what she'd learned, but decided against it, as the data would be in a report eventually, regardless, and Mithril had already tried this five years ago, to very little effect.

Stepping quickly over the tangle of various Arm Slave, torpedo and other sensory equipment that they'd tried to use to figure out what the heck he was, he opened the medical bay's door, only to be staring into the upper chest of Lieutenant Commander Kalinin. Looking up and cursing the fact that all foreigners had to be so tall, he asked, "Sir?" Feeling that 'Get out of my way so that I can get something to eat' wouldn't be a good move for his career.

"Sergeant Ranma," the older man said. "I came down to get the results on you and give you your latest orders."

Ranma shrugged. "The results are probably the same as last time," he commented. The lieutenant commander frowned, but had to nod, knowing that the other had been picked apart pretty thoroughly on his initial physical. "Well then I'll wait for the report on that, however I still need to brief you on your new orders."

Ranma nodded, stepping around the grey haired man and out of the medical bay, before the two of them started down the corridor towards the main briefing room. As they walked, however, Ranma could have sworn that he saw something small and black dart across a hatchway in front of him.

He was about to comment on it, when Captain Testerossa charged through as well, hurrying down one of the companionways to the deck below. Shaking his head, he wondered if repeated dousings of water over a short time could cause hallucinations, and continued on.

HR.

"I still can't believe you'd just throw a gun out in the trash like that," Sousuke said, continuing what had been something of a recurring topic of conversation as she and Kaname made their way home from school.

"Oh, stop pouting already, Sora," Kaname countered with a ghost of a grin. "What else was I supposed to do with it? I mean it wasn't a magical sword or anything."

Sousuke paused in her stride for a moment as though stuck on some undefinable thought before shrugging it off. "You should have kept it and learned how to shoot." Kaname looked at the apparent mercenary incredulously. "...or reported it to the authorities," she finally concluded.

"Either way, how would I make the gun safe enough to handle?" Kaname asked with a hint of frustration creeping into her voice.

Sousuke thought for a moment before responding, "If you truly cannot determine where the safety or clip ejects are, just place the weapon down with the barrel pointing away from yourself and anyone with you, slowly back away, and get someone who knows what he or she is doing. So that this is not a common occurrence, I will teach you how to handle a firearm appropriately."

"Thanks, I guess," Kaname started, before the full import of the redhead's words hit her, and her eyebrow twitched. One thing she'd learned about Sousuke over the past two days was that, when asked something, the other seemed incapable of doing anything but giving the full and complete answer, unless he had a very good reason to lie, which he did badly. Sighing in exasperation, she reached out to open the door into the main lobby of their apartment building. "You know, never mind," she finally said. "I'm sorry for throwing out your gun, okay?"

Sousuke considered her for a moment as they waited for the elevator, and finally nodded. "Apology accepted," she said in a perfect deadpan. "When should I schedule time at the range?"

"Wha... but I... huh?" Kaname sputtered, trying to regain her wits. Looking down into Sousuke's rather serious eyes, she sighed. "Next weekend?" she offered, before realizing, "and where are you going to find a firing range in Tokyo?"

Sousuke didn't respond, merely stepping out of the elevator on their floor, though as she headed to her apartment, she turned. "Kaname?" she asked, her hand on her front door's handle. Seeing the teal haired girl nod, she continued, "Thank you for assisting me today. My mission would have been much harder without your cooperation."

Kaname couldn't really think of something to say before the redhead entered her apartment, closing the door behind her. "Maybe I should help her work on her politeness parameters," she grumbled, irritably.

HR.

"So... I'm rescuing damsels in distress now?" Ranma asked, raising an eyebrow as he studied a picture set out before him of a young, black haired girl with a disturbingly blank stare. Granted, he'd done a great deal of that when he was younger, but it wasn't something that Mithril usually got into, unless the rescuee's parents paid well.

"This is a very important damsel," Kalinin said, his mouth quirking up slightly. "It's important that we recover her, or in the worst case scenario, destroy her." Seeing Ranma open his mouth to say something, Kalinin raised his hand and shook his head. The intelligence agent seemed to get the message, and settled down. "Now the girl is being held somewhere in China, and we're working on tracking the position of the vehicle that was carrying her. Fortunately, we got informed very quickly when her friends called the authorities."

"So, um," Ranma started, "What exactly is so important about this girl?"

"You don't need to know," Kalinin said, blithely.

Ranma frowned darkly. "Does this have anything to do with Kaname?"

This time, Kalinin's mouth turned up into a slight smirk. "You don't need to know," he repeated, though Ranma got the message loud and clear. If the answer had been no, the other man would have said so. "You get time to give Sergeant Sagara a status update and create a cover to explain where his parents are going before you ship out tomorrow morning. Are those orders understood?"

"Yes, sir," Ranma replied, quickly, before picking up the sheaf of papers that was spread across the table before him and standing. Though Mithril wasn't very prone to military ceremony, save for public occasions, he gave the commander a respectful nod before turning and leaving the room.

HR.

This time, Kaname decided as she stood at Ranma and Sousuke's door, she would not be surprised. Of course, over the past two days a lot of things had happened that shocked her, including learning that her uncle was some sort of mercenary, and that she was being protected from... something... by the weird military otaku in class, but she was relatively sure that the worst was over.

Of course, as she said that, the door swung open from her knock earlier, and Sousuke stood in it, male and wearing what looked like a green camouflage tank-top and a pair of black pants. "Uh," she said, having expected Sora, and noticing, very distantly, that the boy actually looked sort of cute, maybe, if she ignored the fact that he was Sousuke.

"Ah, Kaname," he said, nodding to her before turning around and walking back into the apartment. She just stood there for a moment before realizing that she wasn't actually going to be invited in and followed him. As she entered the living room, she noticed that Ranma was standing there, wearing the most unconvincing, and somewhat moth eaten, salaryman's suit she'd ever seen, and holding a very large suitcase in one hand which most people would be hard pressed to drag behind them.

"Ah, Kaname," Ranma said, managing to sound nervous where Sousuke had just sounded bored.

The girl contemplated saying something tactful, before shrugging it off, as this WAS Ranma, after all, and asking "Um, what's with the cheap suit?"

"Hey," Ranma objected. "This cost me sixty thousand yen... six years ago," he finished, looking down at his collar and tugging it. "Maybe storing it in a navy yard storage locker was a bad idea."

The teal haired girl just rolled her eyes, suddenly realizing why Sousuke seemed to listen to what her uncle said, as they both seemed just as clueless about the world in general. "Okay, but where are you going?"

"I've got a business trip," the pigtailed mercenary said, and Kaname was about to ask if he was kidding, before she remembered that he actually could have one.

"I thought you were staying here to keep Sousuke... I mean, to help Sousuke," the girl objected.

Ranma's eyebrow rose, and he looked over at the other mercenary, wondering precisely what had happened to make Kaname think he needed to be kept in line. "You went into the girls bathroom, didn't you?" he asked, flatly.

"Only twice," Sousuke replied quickly.

"He thought a love letter was a terrorist attack," Kaname contributed.

Ranma nodded sagely. "Probably was," he agreed. "Nothin good's ever come out of one of those."

"Now I remember why Mom told me to never ask you for relationship advice," Kaname started, before noticing Ranma's face go still for a moment.

"Yes, well," he said, his usual speech habits changing for a moment. "I have to go now."

"Woops..." Kaname muttered, as Ranma walked past her and out of the apartment. When the door closed behind him, she and Sousuke remained staring at each other for a few moments, before the military boy broke the silence.

"Why did Sergeant Ranma react like that?" He asked, looking at the girl in confusion.

Kaname looked away and out the window for a moment. "I... kinda forgot Mom and relationships was a touchy subject," she admitted. "So, um, we're... on our own now, huh?"

"Not entirely," Sousuke started. "There's..." he stopped himself, as though realizing right then what he had been saying, and though Kaname gave him a strange look, she decided not to push it, as she really didn't want to know.

"I'll see you at school tomorrow," she finally said. "Is Sousuke or Sora going to show up?"

"I'm not sure," Sousuke admitted. "Sora is more inconspicuous, and capable of hiding more ordinance on her person, however I'm still not very comfortable moving as her and dealing with social interactions. Also, the height difference has caused me to lose sight of you several times."

Kaname just stared at him for a moment, before turning around and leaving.

HR.

"I'm bored." Kurz Weber said, as he leaned casually against the back of a chair, peering over Melissa Mao's shoulder.

"I know, you've only said it six times tonight," his commanding officer replied. "Just be glad, it means we don't have to do anything. Wasn't that the whole reason you were so happy about this assignment in the first place?"

"No, it was only half the reason," Kurz retorted. "The other half was the pretty schoolgirls."

Mao decided to ignore the second half of her subordinate's comment, as she didn't want to have to explain shooting him in the groin. "Well, regardless, this has been pretty much a vacation for us. Nothing else's really happened since that Intel officer left a couple of days ago other than that school trip announcement, and I've seen you taking those magazines into your A.S."

"Uh..." Kurz said, trying to find something to change the subject to. "They do have that field trip in a few days."

"And we'll handle that when it comes," Mao returned. "Now either help me with the monitors or go do something else, you're only bored because you're standing around doing nothing."

"What, and do something productive?" Weber laughed. "If I stop hanging around here, I'll have to start filing all the paper work I've been ignoring... and some of that stuff's two years old."

Mao rolled her eyes. "Then let's talk about something other than how bored you are. Have you recalibrated your sights from that horribly vicious baseball hit yet?" Her mocking smirk was obvious, even though Weber couldn't see her face from where he was.

"It was serious! It knocked my sights .15 degrees out of alignment. That could add up pretty damned fast in a fire fight."

"Sure, sure," Mao rolled her eyes.

"I really think you don't get the whole sniper thi..." Kurz started, before trailing off, leaning in closer to his commanding officer.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mao growled, and was half way to elbowing the perverted asshole in the ribs, when he hurriedly pointed to one of the surveillance monitors set up around Kaname's apartment building. Looking, Mao saw what he'd noticed, a rather skinny humanoid figure creeping its way along the side of the building.

"Looks like we've got ourselves an intruder," she commented. "I wonder if you're finally going to get some of the excitement you want so much. Go get your rifle."

"Yes, Ma'am," Kurz said quickly, turning and dashing into the depths of the apartment, coming back a minute later carrying the weapon. "Where is he?" He asked, setting it up at a window ledge.

"He's..." Mao started, before blinking. "Wait a second, he's on the completely wrong side of the building to go after the target."

"What? Is he going to climb into the building and try to get Angel that way?"

"If he was going to do that, he would have entered one of the empty apartments on the second floor," Mao countered. "It looks like..." Her eyes widened, and she grabbed a radio from the table next to the surveillance system. "Urzu 2 to Urzu 7, you've got an inbound, repeat you've got an inbound. Get up, Sousuke!"

"Sergeant Major?" the rather bleary sounding voice of Sousuke crackled over the radio a second later.

"Urzu 7, get ready, there's a hostile climbing the side of the building, and apparently heading for your apartment." Mao said, quickly.

"Understood, Urzu 2," Sousuke replied, apparently having managed to wake up a little more in the few seconds that she had been talking. As she watched the camera, Mao's eyebrow rose as a puff of smoke could be seen issuing from the side of the building, and a loud cracking sound came from the radio.

"Target neutralized," Sousuke's voice came back about ten seconds later, and the two members of Urzu group at the surveillance station shared a look.

"Um, confirmed Urzu 7, do you need any assistance?" Mao asked, a little confused.

"Negative, target is no longer a threat," the younger mercenary returned. "Urzu 7 out." With that last statement, the radio went dead, and Mao shrugged.

"Well, that would have been exciting, except it wasn't," Kurz grumbled, and Mao just rolled her eyes, returning to her vigil over the cameras, with only a mutter of, "I need a drink."

HR.

Kaname couldn't sleep. She knew it was stupid, as the sound she'd heard could have easily been a part of her dream, or a movie being played too loudly, but she couldn't get the thought out of her head that it had been a gunshot, and had come from the direction of Sousuke's apartment.

Granted, her only times having heard gun shots recently had been from Sousuke, or Sora, themselves, on one memorable instance involving a giant raccoon mascot for a nearby fast food chain that had jumped out at them slightly too quickly, but she doubted that even Sousuke could find a reason to shoot something in his own apartment unless it was actually out of the ordinary.

Walking into her darkened apartment, the shadows, broken only by the occasional reflections from car headlights flickering on the ceiling made her even more edgy, and she picked up a rolling pin that had been sitting on the kitchen counter before venturing out and down to Sousuke's front door.

"I'll knock once, and if he doesn't answer, he's asleep and it was nothing," she muttered to herself, doing just that and waiting for several moments. She was about to turn around and make her way back home when the boy's door swung slowly open to reveal Sousuke standing there with a glass of water in one hand, a stupidly long straw reaching out of it and slightly over his head.

"Kaname?" the military boy greeted.

"Did you hear a loud noise earlier?" the teal haired girl asked. "It sounded almost like a gun shot."

"Oh, that was just the flash-bang grenade, no need to be alarmed," Sousuke replied, casually.

"A flash-bang grenade?" Kaname asked, recognizing the device as an example of the one she'd been given three days earlier. "Why did you set off a grenade?"

"It was necessary," the mercenary boy started, before Kaname just sighed in exasperation, pushing him aside and shoving her way into his apartment to see what was going on. When she did see it, however, her eyes widened.

"Oh, H... hello, Chidori-san," a kind of weedy looking boy with brown hair and glasses said, from where he was trussed up in a kitchen chair, his feet tied to the legs and his hands to the spars that made up the back. Next to him was an end table, containing a stun gun, several matches, a pad of steel wool, a kitchen knife, and a set of egg beaters.

"What is going on here?" Kaname bellowed, turning to Sousuke and almost managing to manifest a battle aura.

"I was in the middle of conducting an interrogation," the Sagara boy retorted calmly.

"You were..." Kaname really wasn't sure what to say, so she decided on the easy answer. "Untie him, now!"

"I suppose I've learned all I need to," Sousuke agreed, walking over to the boy and picking up the kitchen knife before going around behind him to cut his hands loose. As he bent to get his feet, the other's hands abruptly flopped to his side, knocking the glass of water that Sousuke was still holding in his left hand. By the time the mercenary realized what was happening, it was too late and he had already shifted into a she.

Kaname just slapped her forehead, muttering something about idiots and water, while the boy who had been tied up managed to turn his upper body to get a look at what the class representative had been looking at. When he saw Sora Sagara kneeling where Sousuke had been preparing to cut his foot bindings, he somehow managed to jump two feet forward, landing on his face.

"I'm so sorry, they made me do it, and they had my pictures, and it was you or Chidori-san, and she gets so angry, and don't let your brother hurt me, and..." he started babbling rapidly, almost crying.

"Hey, calm down," Kaname said, trying to remember the boy's name, as it seemed rather obvious that he knew her, and probably the Sagara 'siblings.' "You're... Suuichiro, right?"

"Shinji," the boy muttered, his face still pressed into the floor. Sousuke helped him out with this, grabbing the chair and the back of his collar before lifting him to a sitting position.

"All right, Shinji, now what's going on?" Kaname asked, trying to sound calm and reassuring.

"There were these guys who wanted to have the panties of hot girls in the school," the boy explained. "They told me to get either yours, Sora's, or that girl from class 2-C's, and I didn't know where she lived, and you're scary when you're angry..."

The boy flinched as he saw Kaname's eyebrow twitch, but went on when he saw that she didn't have any comment. "How was I supposed to know that Sora-san had her underwear drawer wired to explode?"

"Standard security procedure," Sousuke replied, casually, putting the various implements that she'd earlier gathered back where they came from.

"Sousuke..." Kaname groaned, exasperated, where-upon the redhead shrugged back at her, not seeming to understand what her problem was.

"Wait, she.." Shinji asked, before shaking his head. "Look, I don't care, can I go now?"

"Will you give me back the panty you've got in your left back pocket?" Sousuke asked, calmly.

"Oh, um, right..." Shinji muttered, fishing out the plain grey undergarment and handing it over. "They're gunna burn my negatives, I know it, but I just wanna get out of here."

"Who's going to burn your negatives?" Kaname asked, frowning. She didn't like guys being perverts, and she certainly didn't like them being coerced into it. After all, there were enough perverted ones already without creating more. "And what were the negatives of?"

"Oh, they're great shots! Full colour, perfect zoom, they've got every curve and line, it's incredible!" Shinji started gushing, as Kaname's eyebrow started twitching again. "They've got the new M6-A2 type that was on the Okinawa base and everything!"

"What?" Kaname asked, flatly.

"You know, American Military A.S.?" Shinji asked, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"...riiight..." the teal haired girl said slowly, though Sousuke was looking intrigued. "Tell us who's blackmailing you, and I'll see if we can stop it without any casualties." Sousuke didn't say anything, just nodding.

"Um, thanks, I guess," Shinji said, still very confused, especially about Kaname's calling Sora 'Sousuke,' "But... can I get that drink of water now? I'm still very thirsty." Kaname face-faulted.

END.

In case you're curious, the standard security procedure Sousuke mentioned? Written by Mao, and yes, she had a very, very good reason.

That's all for now folks and again, since we can't beg for feedback enough, R&R!


	5. Chapter 4: I L M

Chapter 4: International Lobster of Mystery.

"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Shinji said as he, Kaname and Sous- Sora, he reminded himself. Sousuke, when he was female, something he was trying to get used to, preferred to be called Sora, for whatever reason. Anyways, Shinji, someone who had been blackmailed into scaling a building to steal a girl's panties, was standing with both Sora and Kaname, looking across the yard at the boys who had taken his photographs for ransom.

"Don't worry, it'll be just fine," the long-tressed girl said. "You give them that pair of panties and get your photos back." With a sadistic grin and a crack of her knuckles, she crowed, "And then they'll get their just desserts!"

"Yes, this venture should prove satisfactory," Sora agreed before shouldering a long bag and heading off to the side of a nearby building. Once there she pulled down the fire escape and made her way to the roof.

Shinji took a big breath before letting all the air in his lungs out. "I guess this is it," he said before walking towards the group of boys, the 'pilfered' garment in his hands.

Kaname, for her part, found a convenient bush to hide behind, a detonator remote in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other.

"Hey, it's Kazama!" one of the boys called as Shinji approached. "Do you think he got the goods?"

"I hope not. I wanna burn these stupid things," another said, waving a manilla envelope.

"Takado," another tough sighed. "We're talking about a hot girl's panties, here. Panties, man, panties."

"You said it, Lee," the first boy agreed. Turning to Shinji, he called out, "You got the goods?"

"R-right here!" Shinji called, holding the folded fabric up. "You have my pictures?"

"Don't know why you'd want pictures like that," Lee commented. "Takado, give him the envelope."

"Here you go, now give me the panties." Shinji grabbed the envelope, tossed the boy the panties he had been carrying, and ran. "Huh, guess we're pretty intimidating, right, guys?"

Over in the bush, Kaname sat waiting. She watched as Shinji tossed the panties at the boys and ran, following him with the binoculars. After the boy checked the envelope to make sure all of his precious negatives were there, he looked her way and drew a finger across his throat. Kaname grinned ferally and hit the big, red, shiny button.

The boys were surprised, to say the very least, when the pair of panties they were pawing exploded. The explosion had very little force and barely singed them, but it also created a cloud of acrid, white smoke that left them somewhat confused.

And then the pain started. Each boy was hit several times before they could even think to move. Once they did move, however, the source of the pain seemed to single one of them out at a time, hitting each a few times before moving on to the next. Finally, after receiving a number of bruising strikes, each of the boys found some measure of safety. None would ever touch a pair of panties again, even when their eventual girlfriends asked them to.

Ten minutes later had Shinji, Kaname, and Sora meeting up again. As Kaname handed the detonator back over, she muttered, "I still think we should have used C-4."

HR

"Let's see, cameras with I.R. and U.V. attachments every fifteen feet, an alternating guard patrol every five minutes, what looks like pressure detectors and laser grids on the doors, and I think I heard a dog barking," a black clad figure sitting in a bush several dozen meters away from a large, grey building in the middle of the Chinese wilderness muttered to himself, peering through a pair of binoculars. "The only good thing I can see is that there probably won't be any cats."

"If you say this'll be easy, I'm going to kick you in the ass when you get home," a female voice came through a headset attached to the dark clad figure's ear.

"Nope," he replied. "I'd say it'd take me about a day to bypass, and I still could get caught."

"So... what, are we going to have to call in a full strike team?" the female voice asked, somewhat worried, especially since she and her partner had been on this case, tracking some random kidnapped girl for two and a half days now, and having to turn the final apprehension over to a bunch of A.S. pilots irritated her.

"Nope," the man retorted, pulling off the hood he wore to reveal the face of Ranma Saotome. "I've got a plan."

"Is this one going to involve a bunny outfit, a lobster and a bucket of paint?" his contact asked, dubiously.

"I thought I asked you to never speak of that again," Ranma grumbled, ignoring the snickering from his headset.

HR.

"I... don't get this at all," Sousuke Sagara muttered to himself, as he stared at a pile of trash, apparently practicing for his job as 'Garbage Chief' on their next class trip. Kaname had informed him that it was one of the less pleasant jobs, but about all he was feeling about it right now was confusion. "So... why can't we just bury all of it, again? That would make us much harder to track."

"Sousuke, we aren't trying to avoid trackers," Kaname grumbled, rather thankful that he hadn't asked the question at school that afternoon. "We just need to sort it so the recycling and incineration collectors will take it."

"I see," the military boy replied, holding up a piece of packaging and glancing at the two bags. Kaname sighed, picking it out of his hand and dropping it in the garbage one.

"So, why are you going like this? I'm sure if you called off and Sora came, some 'gallant hero' would volunteer to take the garbage shift," Kaname offered.

"I have been informed that my attendance at this institution has been substandard and that I must improve upon it," Sousuke replied succinctly. "And it will be easier to watch for trouble if Kyoko isn't trying to set me up on a date."

Kaname chuckled. "Yeah, that's true," she replied, remembering that her best friend had seemed to take Sora in as easily as she had the newly arrived Kaname a year before... and then proceeded to try and find her a 'nice boy.'

"You are going to have some fun on this trip, right Sousuke? You're not just going to stalk me all around the city?" Kaname demanded, as she began helping the brown haired boy sort things out.

"I fail to see how the two are mutually exclusive," Sousuke replied, confused.

"Well, maybe I don't want you following me everywhere, did you ever think of that?" The teal haired girl growled, tossing one soda can into the recycling bag slightly too hard. Sousuke thought of opening his mouth to ask for clarification, but was cut off as the Chidori girl continued. "You and Uncle Ranma have been around, apparently watching out for me, for over a week, and I have no idea why. It's just... I either want some time to just go around myself, or I want you to tell me WHY you're so intent on protecting me!"

"It's my mission," Sousuke replied, as if nothing else needed to be said, and as Kaname looked over at him, she realized that he probably thought exactly that.

Sighing, she stood up and headed for the door. "Just... keep your distance on the trip, okay?" she asked.

Sousuke considered for a moment, running Kaname's request against the orders he had, but then caught her eye, noticing... something in it that he couldn't really figure out. "Affirmative," he said without really thinking.

Kaname shook her head for a moment, before turning and leaving the apartment, its very confused occupant sitting in a pile of garbage.

HR.

"Oh, trouble in paradise," Kurz commented, leaning against the edge of the surveillance desk.

"Hmm?" Mao asked, struggling off of the couch, as she'd had a little too much to drink.

"The Angel and lover boy had a bit of a fight," the sniper reported. "Apparently Kaname feels a bit too restricted with her new shadow."

"Well, we can't really do much about that," the sergeant major said, staggering over to Kurz's side to rewind the footage of Sousuke's apartment. Hearing Sousuke's response to Kaname's demand, she slapped her forehead. "Don't tell me he just agreed to back off."

"Um, he didn't just promise to back off?" Kurz attempted, with a smirk that fell flat when he saw his superior officer's expression. "Look, he's a teenager, he's finally starting to show it! He was kinda creepy there, for a while."

Mao found herself nodding in agreement, but then she shook her head. "A hell of a time for him to start noticing girls," she grumbled. "What are we supposed to do if he upholds the promise?"

"I dunno," Weber offered, looking back at the monitors. "How would you feel about being a tourist?"

HR.

"All right," Gauron said, deceptively calmly. "What exactly happened here?" In front of him, several very nervous looking security officers were standing, a guard on one side of the group looking as though the hand of God was descending to kill him manually.

"Um, well, sir," the security man said. "There was a breech of security, and the subject was taken."

"Yes, I gathered that," the brown haired mercenary snorted, rather impatient that his trip out to this isolated facility to transport the whispered back to Amalgam central research facilities had been a total waste.

"Well, it was... that is..." the chief of security stuttered, before giving up, moving slowly to the surveillance terminal that took up most of the main wall of the security office and tapping several controls on a panel beside it. Mutely, he pointed to the monitors, and Gauron watched.

HR.

A black clad figure walked up to one of the security doors on the east side of the facility, carrying a backpack over one shoulder. Immediately upon seeing them, the guard at the gate raised his rifle, calling "Who's there?"

"Security forces commander, division 6," the dark clad man said in a clipped, rushed tone. "I've been ordered to transport one of the prisoners here to another secure facility."

"You've got to be kidding," Gauron mumbled, his eyes lighting up in recognition of the face on the screen.

"Can I see your identification and transfer papers?" the guard asked, causing the figure to roll his eyes.

"I lost them on the hike out here from where my transport flipped on that damned mountain road," he said, sounding disgusted. "Don't suppose you could order me one from the motor pool?"

"Sir, I'm really not sure," the guard started, only to be cut off by the dark clad man's hand.

"Look, no hard feelings, but I've got to get this done. If I'm delayed, higher-ups are gunna be pissed at both of us, and that especially applies if you bother 'em with a background check on a routine prisoner transfer order."

"Yeah, I guess," the guard said, his face suddenly going pale, before he rapidly typed in the code that opened the access door. "I'll get a car around for you by the time you get out."

"So, who were you so afraid of?" The guards jumped at Gauron's voice, all of them having been distracted by the train wreck they were witnessing on the screen. Hearing no response, the brown haired man repeated, "Who was it you were so afraid of annoying? Was it me?"

"N... no, sir," the guard responded, instantly, and at Gauron's upraised eyebrow, he continued, "Dr. Gates, sir."

"Hmm, smart man," Gauron noted, before returning to the video, by which point Ranma was leaving out of the building, holding a young, black haired Japanese girl in his arms, and having apparently walked through the heavily populated facility to get her.

"I asked him to stop when I saw how he was transporting her, sir," the rather nervous guard started, "But he just broke for the car, and I'd left the keys in it, and..."

Gauron watched silently for a moment as the video showed the mentioned events, before a small jeep sped through the complex at high speed. "Well..." he said, bringing a hand up to stroke his chin. "Well, well, well." He hid a smirk as he saw the other men in the room twitch with every repetition of the word. "The security at this base was supposed to be top notch, and yet all you worried about was the exterior perimeter?"

"It was unbreachable, sir, I..." the security chief objected, hurriedly.

Gauron didn't answer directly, just pointing at the screens and smirking nastily. "You," he said, pointing at the guard who was at the door. "You were an idiot, but justifiably so." He turned to the chief, reaching for his belt and removing a pistol. "You, however," he fired the gun, the report echoing around the room and the man falling to the ground, "are too dumb to live. Clean this up, I've got a plane to catch."

"Y...yes, sir," the remaining security men stuttered, before grabbing their former leader's body and dragging it out.

HR.

"Are you all right, kid?" Ranma asked, somewhat concerned, as he and the whispered he'd rescued sat in the jeep he'd... well, technically not stolen from the enemy base's motor pool, him trying to drive despite the crack running through the front window where someone's pistol shot had gotten lucky.

"Oh, I'm fine," the girl said in a soft, dreamy voice, the same one she'd been using ever since she'd rather casually let him carry her out of the base. According to the records, which were probably drawn from past experience he wasn't allowed to know about, the girl should be shuddering in a corner and going through severe drug withdrawal.

"Those eyes are kinda creepy, huh?" his control offered through Ranma's headphones, causing him to sigh.

"She's probably in shock, and you're making fun of her for being creepy?" he hissed, hopefully too quietly for the girl to hear.

"Oh, it's okay, lots a people think I'm strange," The girl said. "Once, Tomo even thought I was possessed by an alien or something."

"Oh?" Ranma asked, cursing himself for under-estimating the girl's hearing. "Who's Tomo, one of your friends?"

"Mmhmm," the girl replied, nodding slowly. "Her, Yomi-san, Chiyo-chan, Kagura-san, and Sakaki's not here, 'cuz you're not Mrs. Kuonji."

"Huh?" Ranma asked, looking over at the girl for a moment, before remembering and bringing his eyes back to the road.

"Huh, she knows about your curse?" his control asked. "And Mrs. Kuonji, huh? Wonder who Mr. Kuonji is?"

"Be quiet," the mercenary hissed. "She's probably hallucinating or something."

"Yeah, prob'ly," the girl agreed, before staring out the window, watching the landscape pass silently.

'Only an hour 'till we get to the retrieval point,' Ranma thought, rather thankful, as the girl's last few statements made him rather agree with Hikari. She was definitely creepy, and she apparently knew something about both his curse and one of his oldest friends.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss that thought, and returning his attention to watching the road for obstacles.

HR.

"This isn't exactly what I had in mind for my next vacation," Melissa Mao complained as she stood in the customs line, hoping that she wouldn't be held up. At the moment, she could still see Sousuke and Kaname's class, the target talking to one of her friends while Sousuke did the same with the boy who'd snuck into his apartment a few days earlier, the two talking over an issue of an Arm Slave magazine, while Sousuke occasionally took covert glances at Kaname.

Looking away from them, the dark haired woman tossed her duffel bag on the scanner, walking through the metal detector and sighing in relief that it wasn't giving a false positive. Mithril had just barely managed to arrange her placement on the flight at short notice, and the plane was already set for boarding.

As she walked across the lobby and into the boarding ramp, she caught a glimpse of Kurz, standing down below on the tarmac, waving up at her, then giving her a thumbs up. "Idiot," she muttered, quietly.

"Did you say anything, Ma'am?" a stewardess asked, touching the soldier on the arm.

"No, nothing," Mao replied, slightly embarrassed to have said that out loud, but pushed it out of her mind as she walked up to Kaname and her friend with the glasses and ponytails. She'd ended up with a seat right behind them, allowing her to keep a much closer eye on them than Sousuke, who had requested placement in another class entirely.

Settling back for what she thought would be a very boring flight, the Mithril sergeant major wondered if she could get any alcohol on the flight.

HR.

It had been over an hour, and Mao was getting rather sick of hearing about Kyoko's guy problems and the porn collection of the two students behind her, when something finally happened. Of course, she was nominally supposed to hope that nothing would happen on the flight, making it perfectly routine, but it was getting so boring at the moment that she was wondering if they might even hit some turbulence.

Looking out the window, which she hadn't done since right after take-off, the mercenary blinked down at several jagged mountain peaks which were passing beneath them. "This doesn't look like anywhere near Okinawa," Kyoko said, giving voice to Mao's thoughts, as Kaname leaned over the other girl to get a look at the window.

The teal haired girl frowned worriedly, finding herself glancing subconsciously back for Sousuke before scolding herself for the action. "Maybe we're diverting to another airport, for weather or something," she offered.

Mao frowned, somehow doubting that, as they were descending already, and the landscape didn't look anything like any part of Japan she was familiar with.

As she thought this, a small lake and airport hove into view from the cloud cover, and her eyes widened, quickly cataloging a vast array of military hardware arranged on the tarmac to greet them. 'I shouldn't have thought it,' she instantly thought. 'I should have just enjoyed the vacation.'

END.

The chapter's a little short, but we wanted to start the next arc off straight, and Weebee really wanted to publish the infiltration scene tonight, so... yeah. Stuff. We hope you enjoyed, and please R&R!


	6. Chapter 5: That'll do Pig, That'll do

Chapter 5: That'll do Pig, That'll do.

Shinji was nervous. Normally, he was nervous because someone was going to beat him up or steal his lunch money. Right now, however, he was nervous because Sousuke was sitting next to him, staring forward into the bulkhead that separated two of the plane's compartments as though he could see through it if he looked hard enough.

Earlier in the flight, the two boys had enjoyed a long conversation about the relative efficiency of incendiary ordinance to flechettes, but Sousuke's gaze had kept getting drawn back to the front of the plane, and this had gotten even worse when they'd seen the F-16 with United Nations markings twenty minutes previous.

"There's something wrong here," Sousuke had muttered, and Shinji was starting to agree, as he looked out the window to see several small specks, growing as they got closer to the ground, and forming into shapes he recognized as those of various Russian made war machines.

"Sousuke," he said, caught between amazement at being able to see the vehicles up close and fear at what their presence could mean, "Take a look at this!"

The taller brown haired boy took a moment away from his attempt to drill through aircraft aluminum with his stare to look out the window, where he noticed the same thing as Shinji had, and cursed. He was just about to get up and start taking a look around when the intercom crackled to life, and a familiar voice came through it, though the mercenary couldn't place where he'd heard it before.

As he heard what was basically a clear admission that he and the rest of the class were being taken hostage, and promises that he'd found empty far too many times in his life that they would be released, Sousuke frowned darkly, standing and walking towards the front of the plane.

"Sousuke, where are you going?" Shinji asked, his glance moving from his new friend to the window intermittently. "They told us to stay put."

The other boy didn't respond, walking slowly towards the door to the next compartment and sticking his head through. What he saw wasn't what he had been fearing, but it wasn't necessarily good, either. Kaname's seat was near the front of the section, and she was still in it, though looking very nervous. Standing next to her was a tall man, pointing a gun at their teacher, who was trembling, her eyes wide, and a laser dot playing across her forehead.

Without really thinking about it, the mercenary brought one arm smacking into the side of the door frame, producing a loud bang, and incidentally bruising his arm. This apparently did what he wanted it to do, as the tall figure turned towards him, causing him to duck back. Also, a woman who had been sitting right behind Kaname seemed to look at him in startlement for a moment, but he wasn't quite sure of that, as he had something a little more important on his mind at the moment.

Falling against a seat near the door, the brown haired boy blinked, his memory repeating the short glimpse he had gotten at the man's face. "Gauron?" He muttered, before shaking his head.

HR.

Melissa Mao thought alternately of hostage rescue tactics and reprimanding a squad mate for idiocy as she slowly, quietly made her way down one of the access stairwells that lead from the passenger levels of the airliner to its cargo deck. Fortunately, this particular group of captors didn't really seem to care what the passengers did, and didn't have patrols, but unfortunately they had also taken Kaname already, and she wasn't sure where they had gone.

Briefly, she wondered where Sousuke was, as she'd gone back to check his seat and pick him up earlier, only to find a rather nervous kid in glasses saying he'd left allready and he had no idea where he was. As she reached the base of the stairwell, she shelved the question of her teammate's location for a moment, playing her flashlight over the dozens of suitcases and crates that had been packed on the plane before take-off.

As her flashlight came across one with the words "Alchemical Bananas," she scowled at the idiocy of the cover name, walking over to pop open the seals, only to stop cold as she heard something rustling in the darkness. Tensing up, she looked around, and heard a soft thumping sound, before everything went silent, save the sound of shallow breathing.

Diving forward, Mao lashed out, grabbing someone by the collar and pulling them up into her flashlight's beam. "Sousuke?" She asked, looking down on the somewhat startled eyes of the brown haired boy.

"Hello Sergeant Major," the younger mercenary replied, as though they'd just met in one of De Danaan's corridors.

"What were you doing down here?" Mao demanded, somewhat irritated for letting Sousuke scare the crap out of her the way he had. She was, after all, his commander.

"I was reconnoitering the area," Sousuke said. "I've discovered several alarming things." As the Sergeant made his report, detailing the fact that there was a rather large, complex explosive stored in one of the crates in the cargo bay, Mao's eyes widened. There were several hundred civilians above them, and the idea of blowing them to hell didn't exactly sit well with her.

"We've got to get out and report this to Mithril," she said, resolutely. "The target's been taken somewhere and we've got a plane full of high schoolers, wonderful."

"Kaname's been taken?" Sousuke asked, the level voice he had possessed when being jumped and grabbed by the neck now somewhat shaky.

Mao just rolled her eyes, getting up from where she'd been hiding with the younger man behind the Banana crate, and swinging it open. "Yeah, but we'll get her back, just as soon as we get a report back to headquarters."

Sousuke was about to ask how, when he got to his feet and looked into the crate. As he surveyed its contents, a barely perceptible smile tugged at the corner of his lips, and he reached in to retrieve an automatic weapon, along with several clips of ammunition. "Let's go."

HR.

"Okay, we're on a submarine, I get that, but has anyone ever heard of verifying seals?" Ranma grumbled, as she walked down a corridor that lead from De Danaan's main hangar to some of the equipment lockers.

"You complain too much," a short, shaggy blonde haired woman in a flight suit who was walking next to the redhead snorted. "I mean, last time it was about the Savage, and now it's just a little maintenance issue."

"It's not a little issue when the ship dumps ten gallons of water on me when we dive," Ranma grumbled, irritably. "And forgive me if I figure an arm slave inside a server room is a bit of a problem."

"I'll remember that next time you ridicule me for being a little freaked out by an acid spitting spider demon, okay?" The blonde said, before the two entered an intersection. "They said your debriefing's in about half an hour, so you've got time to cool off... or warm up, whatever the case may be."

"Yes, ma'am," Ranma said, giving a crooked salute, before turning towards the showers and equipment storage section

The blonde woman chuckled, before heading back to a small communications facility near the ship's C&C. Unfortunately, her good humor died as she slipped into her seat, pulling up a log of all messages sent through the 'less classified' channels, and her eyes widened. "Oh, he's not gunna be happy about this," she winced, playing back a recent communication from Urzu 2.

"So much for time to cool off," the operations officer muttered, taking her headset off and closing the terminal down before heading from the room.

HR.

The main briefing room was a scene of barely controlled chaos, thinly disguised as military efficiency, as over two dozen people from several divisions took seats, scanned reports and tried to catch up on an incredibly complex situation in about five minutes. In the corner, Captain Tessa Testerossa watched the scene, knowing that things would calm down shortly, but wishing, at least somewhat, that they would hurry up.

Next to her, she saw Lieutenant Commander Kalinin clearing his throat, a signal that usually meant that he felt everyone was ready, or close enough to it to pretend. As he gave the initial briefing, detailing the state, location and diplomatic delicacy of the mission, she noticed a disturbance in the back of the room, which he was doing his best to studiously ignore.

Kurz Weber, one of the members of Urzu group, was walking in as though it wasn't against protocol to be several minutes late, tossing off a line about the traffic being murder, while behind him a man she didn't recognize in a black jumpsuit entered as well, taking Sergeant Major Mao's usual seat.

When the newcomer almost stood up at Lieutenant Commander Kalinin's list of priorities, Tessa was about to say something, though apparently he managed to hold back whatever comment he was about to make, slumping back to his seat. When the briefing was dismissed, everyone turned to leave, other than the man in the dark jumpsuit, who walked towards the front of the room.

"Mr. Ranma, you already know that the answer is no," Kalinin spoke before the newcomer could even open his mouth.

"But sir, I..." Ranma started, startled at the speed of the response.

"You're far too close to Miss Chidori, and lack of objectivity tends to cause problems on the battlefield," Ranma opened and closed his mouth several times, before he turned, walking away.

Tessa had heard the man's name several times, as he'd, apparently, become the Tuatha De Danaan's lone permanent intelligence agent, but had never met the man. "Commander," she asked, "why didn't you let the Sergeant make his request?"

"Sergeant Ranma has a close relationship with Miss Chidori's family," Kalinin reported. "He was going to request permission to go on the current mission, primarily for the purpose of rescuing her."

"You were afraid that he would compromise it," This was a statement, not a question, as Tessa had previously had fears of Sousuke doing the same, though more due to his orders to protect the girl, rather than any personal attachments.

Kalinin nodded, and the two turned to look at the large monitor behind them, which was beginning to show the readiness of various sections of the ship.

HR.

"No luck, huh?" Ranma turned, startled, as a hand landed on his shoulder and he resisted instinctively tossing its bearer into a bulkhead. When he saw Kurz' smiling face, he grimaced.

"Too close to the situation," the pigtailed mercenary grumbled.

The SRT member nodded. He didn't exactly like anyone from Intel, and Ranma's curse giving him the creeps didn't help matters any, but the idea of sitting and waiting while someone he knew well was put in danger was something he would feel uncomfortable with at the best of times. "Don't worry, the plan's pretty good, we'll get 'em back," he reassured.

The martial artist didn't respond, only walking past the A.S. pilot, strangely in the same direction.

Kurz snorted. "Yeash, try and cheer a guy up..."

HR.

It was like a river. That was the only way Kaname could describe it, as hundreds of images seemed to bombard her over only a few seconds, then things would go dark for a second, and new images would return. Actually, it was more like the rise and fall of waves. She was about to note that it was kind of funny that all of the analogies she could think of involved water, anything to keep her from trying to understand what she'd seen, which made her feel like her head was going to explode.

There had been a lot of waves so far, more than she really cared to count, and at the moment she would give nearly anything to have them stop. Almost as though someone had heard her, the images stopped again, and this time the blackness wasn't interrupted, until an actual, real seeming human form formed out of a blur before her, a strange headset with a translucent front held in one hand. "Ugh," Kaname managed to articulate.

"How do you feel?" A female voice asked, and the teal haired girl was relatively sure that it was coming from the person she could see.

"I don't think I can take much more of this sleep learning stuff," she admitted, moving her head a little and sitting slightly forward on what felt like an inclined bed.

"Well that's too bad, because we've got a long way to go," the unfamiliar woman said, moving from Kaname's side to a computer bank nearby.

Kaname shook her head, as her memory of the current situation began to trickle back into her. "Why are you doing this? Why can't you just let us go?"

"I'm afraid you don't have the ability to understand, not consciously, at least," the woman said, not looking at Kaname as she talked. "You're going to be quite useful to us."

The Chidori girl gulped at that, before looking around the room she was in. It was rectangular, and completely made of metal. At one end was a set of heavy steel double doors, and there were no easily visible escape routes. 'Is this why Sousuke was always following me around?' She thought to herself. 'Because people were gunna kidnap me and do experiments on me or something?'

One thing that thought brought to mind was that Sousuke was pretty convinced that her life was at stake, if whatever was after her got her. 'Are they going to... kill me?' She thought, looking over at the scientist, who was apparently ignoring her totally now.

Cautiously, the teal haired girl stuck one foot out of the pod, touching the ground with it and resisting the urge to yelp at the temperature of the metal floor. Seeing that the doctor was still ignoring her, she got the rest of the way up, and was half way across the room when she heard an ominous click.

"I'd stop there if I were you," the doctor growled, causing Kaname to turn around and look directly into the barrel of a pistol.

"Um..." Kaname tried, gulping slightly as she saw the unamused face of the woman behind the gun. Then, suddenly, for no real reason she could understand, but that Ranma, or her mother, could explain to her quite easily, she started getting angry.

She'd just wanted to go on a trip to Okinawa, with Sousuke off doing something else, so maybe she could go sun bathing or something. Was that too much to ask? Did she HAVE to get kidnapped the second he left her alone? It was down right unreasonable, she thought, and despite the fact that the gun was still aimed at her head, Kaname Chidori decided that she was going to do something about it.

'Saotome school of anything goes special technique,' Kaname thought, wondering exactly what she was thinking. "Cheap Shot!" The attack was meant to disable male attackers, but, according to Ranma, who would know such things, it worked quite well on women as well, as was evidenced when the woman holding a gun on her abruptly crumpled around the knee she'd just raised up into her groin with great force. Immediately after this, the teenager brought both hands, clenched together, down across the other's neck, and she stopped moving.

For a moment, she was terrified, wondering if she'd accidentally killed someone, before she bent down, placing a hand in front of the older woman's mouth and feeling the soft breath against her skin.

"Well, that was easy," the teal haired girl said, standing again. "But... what do I do now?"

HR.

"Okay, so who is this guy, exactly?" Mao asked, as she and Sousuke lay on top of a shipping crate, looking across at the back of a truck, where Gauron had just exited.

"A highly dangerous terrorist I fought several years ago, though I thought he was dead," Sousuke answered. "He is the one who took Chidori-san?"

"Yeah, he and a couple of other guys marched in and said something about using her for a television broadcast. The excuse was pretty hard to swallow, though." Mao responded. "Though I'm a little curious. Usually when you think someone's dead, it's because you've loaded their pants with twenty pounds of explosives. How'd this guy survive?"

Sousuke shook his head. "I don't know," he confessed. "I shot him in the head."

Mao just barely stopped herself from whistling. "Then he's a tough bastard, I'll give him that," she said. "The target's probably in that truck."

"Then we should go get her," Sousuke checked his rifle's magazine, only to have his superior officer lay a hand on the barrel.

"Slow down Sergeant, we're to wait for the others to back us up, and then the passengers are top priority." Seeing the younger mercenaries' expression, she shook her head. "Besides, if they went to all this trouble to capture Kaname, they're not going to shoot her now."

"Yes, Ma'am," Sousuke agreed, though Mao noticed that this agreement didn't stop him from watching the truck like a hawk for the next ten minutes. This turned out to be a very good thing, as about that amount of time later, the truck's back door opened slightly, only to slam closed immediately.

Unfortunately, the guards who were standing in front of the door noticed, and one radioed in a disturbance, while the other grabbed the handle and re-opened it. Standing in the doorway, and looking rather disheveled, was Kaname, wearing a white lab coat. She spoke to the soldiers for a few seconds, something neither of the Mithril agents could catch, before one reached out and grabbed her arm.

"Sousuke..." Mao started, but it was too late, as the younger mercenary had drawn a bead and fired, sending the guard slumping to the ground. "I'd reprimand you for that, but it's too late now!" The Sergeant Major exclaimed, taking up her own weapon, as Sousuke jumped off of the crate and started running towards Kaname.

Fortunately, there were only two other guards in the area who had heard the disturbance, and the three were standing in relative piece at the back of the truck a few moments later. Kaname looked rather shaken, especially since there were several corpses laying a few feet away from her, but the other two were just reloading their weapons and checking for enemy targets.

"You just had to give us away, didn't you?" Mao griped, though her heart wasn't really in it.

"Kaname could have been hurt," Sousuke replied, "And my primary objective is..."

"Currently keeping a low profile, so they don't nuke the hostages," Mao cut him off. "But it's too late now, and reinforcements should be here in a few minutes."

"I saw a hangar which likely contained Arm Slaves on the other end of the base," Sousuke offered. "Since we've blown our cover now, it would probably be best to get as far from here as we can."

"I hate to admit it, but you're right," Mao agreed, and the two started for the nearest truck that hadn't been converted into an immobile laboratory.

"Um..." Kaname said, still rather confused at what was going on. She was about to ask, when something hit the truck's side nearby with a loud 'ting.' Seeing the scar left by a bullet in the metal, she gulped loudly and followed the two mercenaries.

HR.

The office was dark, save for two flickering monitors, as a dark haired woman tossed back her sixth coffee, vaguely wondering why she still stayed up until midnight working when she could probably pay people to do this sort of stuff for her by this point. Looking down at the page she was working on, where she was writing a contract negotiation, competing with the Kuno Investment Corporation for a small electronics Company in Australia, she smirked, set her cup down and was about to pick up her pencil to start again when a soft beep came from her computer.

Turning to the screen, she noticed that an alert was flashing from one of her RSS feed programs. She contemplated leaving it until later, until she realized that it was the one configured to catch material that was of personal interest to her or her family.

Opening the window quickly, her eyes widened as she read over an article that had apparently been written based on a United Nations intelligence leak, detailing the capture of a plane load of high school students from Jindai high. Noting the class number, she cursed, reaching for her phone.

After a few moments of ringing, extra dialing, and arguing with a rather sleazy sounding nasally voiced man, the person the dark haired woman wanted to speak to finally picked up on the other end of the line. "Yeah, I know you're busy," she grumbled, not being used to being on the other end of that quickly snapped comment. "This is important. Look, it's after midnight here, would I be calling if it wasn't?"

After several seconds of the person on the other end speaking loudly, and apparently yelling at someone, the dark haired woman smirked, before catching sight of her monitor, her face going somber again. "Look, just turn on CNN, the story should break in about an hour, and you might want to get back to Japan... fast."

HR.

"Okay, everything looks good here," Kurz Weber said, looking over the displays in his Arm Slave's cockpit, experimentally flexing one hand and checking the returns. "And someone even got around to recalibrating my scope." For a moment, he half expected Mao to come back at him with some snide comment,before remembering that she was already in the war zone.

"Cut the chatter Urzu 6, are you ready?" The voice of Urzu group's leader, Captain Gail McAllen, barked, his angry face appearing on the blond's monitor.

"All right, all right, it was just a status report," Kurz grumbled, flicking through the zoom modes on his machine's optics. As he focused on the transport helicopter that would return the two Arm Slaves from the drop zone, as well as taking the ground troops, he noticed a flicker of movement behind a fuel tank. Curiously, he zoomed in further, seeing a black pigtail disappearing behind the tank, before a blur burst out from it, in the direction of the chopper.

"You ready yet, Weber?" Captain McAllen's voice burst through the sniper's comm. system, causing him to jump slightly, his camera returning to its default view.

"Yes sir," Kurz said quickly, and then smirked, ensuring his microphone was off. "You're so going to owe me for this," He said, before marching towards De Danaan's catapults.

HR.

"I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die," Kaname chanted to herself, trying not to think of her surroundings, as she was being shaken around like a rag doll. Normally, the teal haired girl was one of the braver people in her class, though at the moment she was being held in the hand of a giant somewhat bear-shaped robot while its other hand held the biggest machine gun she'd ever seen, and since she'd seen Commando, that was saying something.

"Are you all right, Kaname?" Sousuke's voice came through a radio the girl had been given, as the two, followed by a second A.S. with a machine gun in each hand, left the tarmac of the air field and her ride got a lot bumpier.

"Yeah, sure, I'm great," the girl yelled back into her radio, her sarcasm perhaps lost in the volume of her voice, as Sousuke seemed to take that as permission to spin, face backwards, and raise his gun to give Sergeant Major Mao some support in laying down fire to cover their retreat.

Kaname just gulped, clutching the hand of the Arm Slave even tighter, and wondering exactly who she'd pissed off to get into this mess. She didn't have much time to think this, however, as she heard what sounded like a new machine gun joining in on the chaos. Looking backwards between the arm and shoulder of the Arm Slave that Sousuke piloted, she saw that it wasn't a new weapon firing, but the sound of dozens of tree branches snapping like match sticks.

This turned out to be a good thing, as the enemy gun fire began to trail off significantly as the canopy of forest closed over the two retreating A.S.'s, and both stopped firing, not wanting to give their positions away. "Well, we lost them for now," the unfamiliar voice that the Chidori girl was beginning to associate with Mao crackled from Kaname's radio, as the older woman lowered her two guns, looking around cautiously. "Don't suppose you bothered seeing a friendly military base along with that Arm Slave hanger, huh Urzu 7?"

"Negative, Ma'am," Sousuke replied, instantly, causing Kaname to roll her eyes slightly and an exasperated sigh to come through the radio.

"I saw a river near here, I think," she offered, trying to remember exactly where they had moved since the plane landed.

"Hmm, we could move along it and see if we can find some form of civilization," Sousuke suggested, though he sounded uncertain.

"Yeah, probably angry Russian civilization," Mao returned. "Still, it's likely the only clear path out of here that'll be hard to track, so it's our best bet."

"Understood," Sousuke replied, and the two machines continued through the forest, their efforts to try and create as little disturbance in the trees as possible rather humorous, if you didn't think too hard about the fact that they would likely be killed if caught.

Kaname was doing her best, at the moment, not to think of that, especially since she was pretty sure she had been certifiably insane when she'd kicked that scientist in the crotch and stolen her gun. She would have started trembling in shock from it when she first realized what she'd done, but the three of them had been in a supply truck, being shot at at the time, and it hadn't quite had a chance to register.

Tentatively, the girl pressed down the transmit button on her radio. "Is this... normal for you guys?" She asked, wanting to talk to someone, even if it was Sousuke and some woman she barely knew.

"It's a relatively standard engagement, yes," Sousuke replied.

"Oh," Kaname said, somewhat surprised by the straight answer.

"Hey, don't worry," Mao said, seeming to understand Kaname's worry a lot more than Sousuke did. "One of Mithril's main missions is anti-terrorist and hostage rescue, you'll be fine."

"Yeah, I..." Kaname started, as she began to hear the sound of the river that they had been aiming for. "Thanks."

"What was that..." Sousuke started, before there was a soft pop from nearby that caused his Arm Slave to spin so quickly that it made Kaname a little nauseous.

"Grenade!" Mao bellowed, hauling out her machine guns and blazing away at the sky, causing a huge explosion about fifteen meters away from them. "Mutual cover position!" She barked.

"Affirmative," Sousuke said quickly, and the two A. quickly moved back to back, making their way slowly out into the middle of the open water, where they could see their surroundings more easily. Several seconds later, when there was no more disturbance, Sousuke slowly bent, trying to put Kaname down in the water without taking his eyes off of his half of the landscape. As he, and Mao, were pretty much expecting, the enemy took that moment to react, and another grenade flew out of the darkness.

The Sergeant Major quickly moved past Sousuke's machine, taking aim at the grenade and blowing it out of the sky as Kaname dropped the last few feet to the water and started running, trying to get out of the combat zone. Unfortunately, this was apparently exactly what the enemy wanted, as a bullet burst out of the tree cover nearby, hitting Mao's Savage in the chest and sending her staggering backwards.

As she was recovering, Sousuke brought his weapon up, firing into the trees where the bullet had come from, though nothing seemed to be there to be hit. "Where is he?" He growled, his exclamation audible to both Kaname, who had made it to the far bank by this point, and Mao.

"Not sure," the older woman confessed, before another shot came from the forest several meters from where the last one had, barely missing her as she dove out of the way... right into a grenade. She just had time to curse when the thing went off, causing severe damage to her machine's optics and the armor on its front and left side.

Sousuke cursed under his breath, moving forward to cover Mao's fallen form and resisting the urge to look back. "Kaname, stay out of the way," He said, quickly.

"Ah, it looks like we've got a couple of knights in shining armor, here," A voice crackled over Sousuke's inter-A.S. communications line, as a very familiar face flickered onto a small screen on the left side of his cockpit. "Too bad I broke one already."

"Gauron?" Sousuke asked, recognizing the face, as he thought he had earlier. He hadn't been able to be sure before, as he'd only seen him for a few moments, but now it was definite.

"Oh, one of our knights knows me?" The older man asked, surprised, before another shot burst from the tree line, barely missing Sousuke's arm. "Could that be... Why, I think it is! Kashim, is that you?"

Sousuke didn't respond, only returning fire once again, however his growl when his bullets only tore up trees was definitely tinged with annoyance. "Kashim," Gauron continued. "Why don't you stand down? All I've got to do is take the little burden over there off your hands, and then, who knows? I might even just let you walk out!"

The young mercenary looked over to Kaname, who was standing on the shore and had apparently lost her radio, unable to hear what they were saying, though she kept throwing worried looks between him and Mao. "You're kind of unresponsive, aren't you?" Gauron continued. "How about I take the choice away from you?"

"Wh..." Sousuke started, before a shot smashed into his side from a position that he would have thought it impossible to get to in an Arm Slave without making any noise, and his weapon fell into the water with a loud splash. "How about I ask the lady?" Gauron's voice was now coming from a set of loud speakers attached to a tall, slim Arm Slave that was walking out of the forest.

"Ask me what?" Kaname yelled, confused and now very worried.

"Oh, nothing," Gauron said off-hand. "I just need to take you back and let some of my friends play around with your brain, that's all. I just wanted to know if you'd agree to that if I didn't blow out Kashim's brains, here."

Sousuke was about to say something in response to that along the lines of 'No way in hell' when a message appeared at the bottom of his tactical display, requesting a sensor feed from RK-92-114125, and followed by the word "URZU" used as a confirmation code. He barely looked at it before sending an acknowledgment, his attention mainly focused on Gauron, who was walking closer by the moment, and now had the muzzle of what looked like a rifle welded to a grenade launcher aimed at his machine's chest.

"So, how about it, Kashim, girl?" The psychotic asked, his face on Sousuke's monitor showing a large grin.

"How about you go to hell?" The voice was Mao's, and the stream of automatic weapon fire that slammed into the side of the slender A.S. was hers as well, sending it staggering sideways, though a glowing red shield of... something... popped up to stop the rounds after the first hit.

"How in the..." Gauron demanded, spinning to see the Savage he'd downed earlier pointing its main weapon at him, though its arm was slightly shaky. As the magazine clicked on empty, however, the man chuckled. "Good shot," he admitted. "Try this one." He raised his weapon, taking careful aim at the top of the wounded Arm Slave in order to put a bullet in the cockpit. "Sorry Kashim, but I'm afraid your little friend pissed me off," he said, right before he pulled the trigger... and the front of his gun exploded.

HR.

"Captain, all troops are on course, and the two Urzu group Arm Slaves are almost at the landing zone," A man on the Tuatha De Danaan's bridge reported crisply, as Tessa sat in the captain's chair, holding her pet pig much in the way a Bond villain would do with their cat. She knew that it wasn't exactly proper protocol, but having the animal around seemed to relieve some of the stress she was under on a day to day basis, and there were actually no regulations against it.

The young captain nodded at the status report, flicking her eyes over the status board at the front of the room and affirming the report for herself before another officer reported, this one sounding a little more nervous. "Ma'am, one of the troop transports just reported an anomaly."

"What is it?" Commander Mardukas asked from next to the grey haired girl's chair.

"They say that they had a stow away aboard. He's just jumped ship, muttering something about Cheese signatures, or something."

"Cheese signatures?" Tessa asked, looking confused. "Did they say anything about this person's identity or appearance?"

"Apparently he had a braided ponytail, Ma'am," The radio operator reported. "They say he also jumped without any drop gear."

"Ranma," this was Kalinin, standing behind the captain's chair with a frown on his face. "I should have expected this."

"I'm sure it's not your fault, Mr. Kalinin," Tessa said, petting her pig. "Though I would wonder why Mr. Ranma would jump from the helicopter without a parachute, and what he meant by cheese signatures." As she said that, she felt a tug at the bottom of her shirt, and looked down to see that the pig was glowing green. She was about to look back up to the screens, when her brain finally processed what her eyes had just seen, and she looked back down at the animal in shock. Suddenly, her eyes seemed to half glaze, and she began to mumble.

Among several dozen terms that flew through her brain too quickly for her to even articulate clearly, she managed to snatch a few fragments of meaning. "Chi... Life force... Controlled Electromagnetic Energy... Lambda Driver..." Her eyes suddenly cleared, and then widened, as she looked between her pet pig and the rest of the bridge. "Commander Mardukas, prepare the Arbalest for launch," she ordered, smoothly.

"Ma'am?" The older man in the baseball cap asked, having missed what had just happened, or studiously pretended to, at the least.

"I have reason to believe that someone out there is using a Lambda Driver," Tessa explained, worriedly. "As soon as this is confirmed, we will have to deploy the Arbalest."

"Yes, Ma'am," the commander said, quickly, turning and walking off of the bridge in order to make the preparations.

Once no one was near enough to hear her, the teenaged girl looked down at her pig, unsure how to react. "When this is over," She said softly, "We're going to have a talk." The animal gulped.

END.

Hope you've enjoyed another chapter. Please don't forget to review and tell us what you think.


	7. Chapter 6: Pigs On A Sub

Chapter 6: Pigs On A Sub.

As wind whipped past him at roughly twice a normal person's terminal velocity, Ranma both thanked all the kami that had ever been pissed off at him that he'd learned at least some of Herb's chi gliding trick and wondered if he was completely insane. He'd just jumped out of a combat helicopter at altitudes higher than Akane or Happosai had ever sent him and was currently screaming towards a thick forest full of trees that would happily impale him on branches because he'd thought he'd felt a really, really angry Chi signature.

As a river beneath him began to grow to the point that he could see details rather than a small ribbon of water, if he squinted, his eyes widened. There were two Russian suits being menaced by what looked vaguely, from this distance, like Kodachi Kuno as a giant robot. Seeing that both Soviet machines were disabled and the taller A.S. was about to put a bullet through one cockpit, he aimed a Moko-Takabisha as best he could while the wind made it hard to see past his tearing eyes and let loose. It was at about that point that he remembered he should probably begin bracing for a landing, and about five seconds later he impacted with the shallow water.

HR.

"What the hell?" Gauron scowled, his eyes almost crossing as he looked at the bent and broken barrel of his gun, before he tossed it away disgustedly. He was about to jump back and turn, keeping his two enemies in sight while trying to spot his new one, but that quickly became unnecessary, as something smashed into the water behind Sousuke's A.S, the water settling a moment later to reveal a rather frazzled looking red haired woman who was almost curled into a ball.

The scene was frozen that way for a second or so, before the redhead groaned loudly, forcing herself to her feet. The insane mercenary blinked at her for a few seconds, before voicing his startlement. "Ah, if it isn't the old pain in my ass!" He chuckled. "I saw you lurking around recently, but didn't think you were with the same softy outfit as Kashim here."

"What?" the previously mentioned pilot asked, along with Kaname, who was looking between the A.S. with the destroyed gun and the family member who, for all she knew, had just dropped from orbit.

Gauron didn't seem to notice this, continuing his speech. "I'm afraid this time, though, I don't really have any use for you. You just wouldn't be a challenge." The last statement seemed to drip with venom, as he catapulted himself over the Savage, incidentally using its head as a pivot point, and tried to squash the pigtailed martial artist flat.

"Yeah, I never liked you either," Ranma quipped back, rolling to the side and just missing being pounded into the riverbed by the machine's foot. As Sousuke looked on in astonishment, he noticed the redhead moving one hand quickly in an easily recognizable small unit sign for "covered retreat."

"Tell me she's kidding," Mao's voice came from the young mercenary's cockpit's speakers. "She wants to distract that thing while we run?"

As Gauron turned, withdrawing a large knife from somewhere on his A.S.'s torso and slashing at Ranma, who actually leapt, landing on the top of the blade, running up the thing's arm and kicking it in the head, Sousuke replied dryly, "I believe that she's making a good distraction of herself."

Mao just sighed. "This hunk of junk's too badly damaged, so I'll transfer over to yours. Once that's done, we're going to have to grab Kaname and run like hell, understood?"

"Not a problem," Sousuke replied, nodding.

HR.

"Approaching drop point." Kurz winced at the voice of his Arm Slave's A.I, wishing that Mithril could have shelled out for a half decent voice program as he made several tiny adjustments to better aim for the landing strip near the edge of the military base. His tactical display showed his commanding officer coming down behind him, preparing to cover him as he disposed of the bomb inside of the aircraft.

Hitting the release on the airfoil that had carried him to the drop-zone, he tried not to wince as his M9 hit the ground with a loud, reverberating impact and his teeth clacked together. Instead, he immediately ran forward, withdrawing a chainblade he'd been specially issued for the mission and cutting a slice out of the side of a commercial airliner. As he did so, he scanned the windows above the cargo area, looking for any sign of his teammates, but winced when he didn't see them.

He resisted the urge to shake himself as a plate of metal fell from the plane's side and he reached in, grabbing the bomb. Of course, Sousuke and Mao were probably off somewhere preparing to give support to the ground troops, though he was really wondering why he couldn't detect the tracking gear in their weapons by this point.

"Damn it," he muttered, as the bomb was hurled up into the air, exploding massively. "If you guys are out there, that's one hell of a signal!"

HR.

"Why won't you stand still and die?" Gauron bellowed, as he leapt up after his target, wondering if the bitch had always been this good, or if she'd somehow gotten better.

"Die to a failure like you?" Ranma asked, smirking as she saw the infinitesimal twitch in the enemy machine's movements that meant Gauron had just made a fist without wanting to, and taking a moment to scan for Kaname and the others. She sighed in relief, noting that they were out of her range, which meant they could probably get enough of a running start to ditch the Savage and get lost in the forest, if they had any brains.

Unfortunately, while trying to ensure that the others had gotten away, Ranma had stopped moving for a brief second, which would likely have gotten her killed, or at the least badly battered, if it weren't for the fact that Gauron had managed to calm himself down after her last jab.

He'd worked with Ranma many times before, and had actually seen him or her get several American M3 pilots so mad that they'd blown each other's heads off. Carefully surveying his surroundings, as he knew the martial artist couldn't actually do any damage to the Lambda driver equipped Codarl, he realized exactly what the martial artist was doing. "You bitch..." he howled, a whining noise beginning in his machine's cockpit as his Lambda driver suddenly gained a massive boost of furious will.

Ranma continued to stand in place, shocked, as a massive explosion went off about a mile to the south and she was hit by a wave of Chi worthy of a pissed off Saffron at about the same time. "That... No way in hell!" she yelled, as the diffuse wave was proceeded by an actual physical force, emanating from the Arm Slave and sending the martial artist flying across the river and into a tree on the opposite bank.

She was just shaking off the impact and trying to get the immense battle aura that had suddenly infused everything around her to stop pounding her extra senses when the red machine came at her with its knife again, slicing the tree she'd already damaged in half as she rolled away. "I don't care about the mission right now," Gauron's voice boomed. "I'm going to kill you!"

"Well, at least I distracted him," Ranma muttered, vaulting to her feet and starting to run as Gauron turned from his defoliating project to chase her.

HR.

Akane Chidori didn't think she'd ever made travel plans faster in her entire life, as she sat on a 747 bound for Tokyo, nervously watching a CNN special report on the hijacking of the airliner that contained her daughter and her class. Immediately after Nabiki had given her the news and she'd seen the story break, she'd called the girl's apartment in Tokyo, hoping against hope that she had decided to stay home today.

The blue-black haired woman looked down at the ocean as it passed beneath her, thinking about the cheerful, yet panic inducing message that had greeted her when the answering machine had picked up. "Sorry, but I'll be gone for the next week, leave a message and I'll get back to you after Monday."

For a moment, the former Tendo contemplated calling Ranma and seeing if he was willing to go riding to her daughter's rescue, but scolded herself for her idiocy. After all, venturing into the middle of war torn areas was something even he wasn't stupid enough to do... probably.

Leaning back in her chair and pulling her gaze away from the window, Akane caught sight of the screen at the front of the business class compartment, which was playing the movie she'd originally come to the U.S. in order to star in, a stupid spy action flick with more horrible oriental accents than she'd really like to admit, especially since one of them was hers.

For a moment, she wondered if Kaname had been kidnapped specifically to target her, but shook her head. She was pretty famous, but not that well known, and it was probably stupid to think that she was responsible for this. After all, she hadn't been responsible for much in Kaname's life over the past five years.

"Kaname-chan, please be all right," she whispered, worriedly.

HR.

"What do you think that was?" Kaname asked, as she, Mao and a female Sousuke stood in the rain, staring up at a sky which was darkening slowly from a massive explosion of light.

The sergeant major shrugged. She actually had a couple of ideas, but neither of them were really good to suggest to a shivering civilian in nothing but a lab coat.

"It wasn't an Arm Slave explosion," Sousuke reported, sharing none of her superior's tact. "It was large enough to be the explosive planted aboard the plane, but the angle was too high for it to have detonated on the ground."

Mao winced, especially when she saw Kaname's eyes widen, but nodded. "That means that either it wasn't in the plane, or the plane took off before it exploded," she noted, having faith in Sousuke's analysis of the situation as the most explosives savvy person she'd ever met.

"Then... we should go back and see if they're okay," Kaname said, uncertainly.

"If the explosive went off outside of the aircraft, it could mean that our reinforcements are here," Sousuke suggested, just as Mao was about to veto the idea.

"I suppose you could be right," the older woman agreed, sighing in annoyance. "But we'd better move around to avoid that stretch of river where that damned A.S. was."

Sousuke nodded, though Kaname winced at the reminder of what was happening with Ranma, and the three moved out.

HR.

"All right, that's everyone," Captain McAllen noted, as the last of the civilians filed onto the transport planes from the now rather useless hulk of the 747.

"Yeah, everyone but the rest of our team," Kurz replied, scanning the various outbuildings for any sign of Sousuke or Mao.

"Yeah, well unfortunately we've been given orders to pull back without them," the captain said, sounding reluctant himself, but understanding the mission. "Load up on the transport and let's get home."

"Sorry sir, but what?" Kurz asked, frowning.

"You heard me, Sergeant," the captain snapped, irritably.

Kurz' mouth suddenly formed into a grin, as he took one arm from its usual control sleeve, reaching forward and flicking a switch on the console in front of him back and fourth rapidly. "Sorry sir, but I'm losing you, something's wrong with my comm. system. I'm going to look for Urzu 2 and Urzu 7, over."

"What? Weber, you'd better not..." Kurz finally flipped the switch for the last time, silencing his radio, and returned his hand to its control sleeve.

"Incoming priority transmission from TDD-1," his artificial intelligence voice informed him several seconds later, as he was rapidly approaching a tree line where he could see the obvious signs of something large breaking its way through.

"Ah, shut up," he muttered, wondering precisely how fired he'd be when he got back as he heard the transport helicopter flying away overhead.

Turning his full attention to the trail before him, he noted that it was most likely made by a large Arm Slave, if not two walking together, and there were a lot of large shell casings nearby. He didn't exactly need his rather good wilderness tracking skills to figure out that it was probably where the other Mithril operatives had gone, and as the constant pulse of the Tuatha de Danaan's comm. request sat in the corner of his main screen, he did his best to ignore it and track the trail.

This, of course, became exponentially easier when he edged out of the trees at a river bed a few minutes later to see several trees cut down by gun fire, and a few craters in the riverbank where grenades had obviously gone off.

Noticing an empty RK-92 laying face down in the water, he cursed and was about to dismount and try tracking the others on foot when a loud explosion echoed from slightly down river. Curious, he magnified the view down stream and blinked as he saw an unknown, thin A.S, which was glowing with a red aura and appeared to be holding a combat knife against something crumpled at the base of a tree.

Without thinking, the sniper squeezed off several shots in succession, which smashed into the glowing machine and sent it stumbling to the side. Abruptly, the red haze disappeared from around the enemy machine, and it turned, charging down the stream. "What the hell was that?" the sniper muttered, contemplating moving after the strange Arm Slave, but reconsidering as it managed to run out of range more quickly than any other he'd ever seen.

He was about to dismiss what he'd seen, at least for the moment, when he saw the thing that the other A.S. had been holding its knife to move, resolving into a human figure who laboriously made its way up the river bank. He was about to ask who they were, when they apparently lost their grip on the slope and fell back towards the water.

"Damn it," the A.S. pilot cursed, moving to help whoever it was and hoping that it wasn't any of his teammates, as they didn't look too good.

HR.

"No one's here," Kaname observed, as she, Mao and Sousuke hunkered behind a bush, staring across the tarmac at the 747 with the gutted cargo deck.

"There are several hundred troops on the base," Sousuke replied, before a glare from the teal haired girl caused her to shut her mouth.

"Well, what do we do now?" the Chidori girl asked, sighing.

"We could head back to that river," Mao offered. "Continue with the plan from before.

"If that other A.S. isn't still there, yes," Sousuke agreed.

"We could try and sneak past it," Kaname offered, only to get a shake of the head from the redhead.

"Most Arm Slaves have powerful infrared sensors. The fact that it hasn't found us already is surprising," Mao explained, when Sousuke appeared to be reluctant to do the same. "That means we should probably take advantage of the fact that we haven't been spotted and head through the forest rather than overland."

Sousuke nodded, and Kaname only looked at the others, confused, before resisting the urge to sneeze. Having apparently gotten as close to universal agreement as they were likely to get, all three started walking.

HR.

It was half an hour later when they first heard it. It was Sousuke who stopped, turning nervously and tightening her grip on her assault rifle. "Did you hear that?" she asked, causing the other two to look back towards her.

"Hear what?" Kaname asked, wrapping her lab coat around herself, and being rather grateful that the rain had stopped a few minutes before.

"It sounds like something's moving towards us through the bush," Sousuke reported, and Mao was instantly on alert, straining to hear what the younger mercenary did. Just as she thought she heard something, Kaname opened her mouth to speak up, and was immediately shhed.

She crossed her arms, trying to figure out what the other two were all excited about, when she heard a crackling sound similar to the one Sousuke's Savage had made as it had cut through the trees, though it was rather quiet, getting steadily louder.

"We'd better hide," the elder mercenary said, looking around for a good tree to use as cover.

"But I thought you said they could see us?" the teal haired girl asked, worriedly.

"They can, but if we can get in position, one of us could do some damage when they spot another," Sousuke explained, climbing a nearby tree.

"What do I do?" Kaname asked, looking between the two.

Sousuke was about to answer, when a form suddenly broke through the trees nearby, and Kaname scrambled for cover. As she did, however, Mao began laughing from where she'd hidden in a natural bowl created by the base and roots of one tree. "What's so funny?" the Chidori girl asked, indignantly, from where she was hiding behind the tree Sousuke was up.

"That's an M9," the Sergeant Major called. "Who's there?"

"Only your knight in shining armor," Kurz' voice came from the speakers on the Mithril A.S. "You guys really worked hard to avoid me, huh?"

"Shut up and report, Sergeant," Mao said, trying to hold back a grin at the fact that backup had arrived.

"Well, the report's not good," Kurz admitted. "First off, the evac plane's gone, and I sorta disobeyed orders to find you... but don't tell them that, I just had a little radio malfunction, that's all."

"What?" Mao exclaimed, shocked, but she was cut off by Kurz' next report.

"Secondly, there's some strange new Arm Slave out here that likes glowing, and we've got a man down." Saying this, the blond sniper lowered one of his M9's hands, revealing a battered, unconscious redhead who was bleeding copiously from several wounds.

HR.

"Captain, Urzu 6 is reporting in," an excited technician called across the bridge of the Tuatha de Danaan, causing Tessa's head to rise immediately.

"Put him through," she ordered. She hadn't exactly been pleased when it turned out that Sergeant Sagara and Sergeant Major Mao had gone missing, both due to the probable loss of life and the fact that it would likely cripple Urzu group, but the loss of the sniper had been even worse, as he'd apparently taken it upon himself to disobey orders and head in after the others, which was something she could sympathize with, even if she didn't agree with it.

"Urzu 6 to base, are you receiving?" Kurz' voice came over the bridge's speakers, and Tessa nodded.

"We're here, report," she demanded, before Lieutenant Commander Kalinin could even open his mouth, visibly surprising him.

"I've found the target and the other members of Urzu group," the sniper reported. "Unfortunately we've only got my Arm Slave and a couple of assault rifles with low ammunition. Also, we have a critically wounded Intel officer out here."

"Ranma?" the captain asked, sharply.

"Yeah, how'd you..." Kurz started, before deciding that it was unimportant. "Look, she's pretty badly hurt, and we don't have much out here to treat her. Add that to three other people we need to extract and..." He trailed off, but Tessa could make the connection easily enough.

The problem was that all of the people there likely couldn't be carried on Kurz' M9, even if they had an evacuation corridor, which they currently didn't have. This meant that they would have to move at a human's walking pace, and the injured soldier would likely die in the time it took to get out, not to mention that enemy patrols would likely find them.

As a half dozen strategies for getting everyone out of the situation flashed through Tessa's mind, her hand tapped away at the small computer display screen built into her chair arm, going through the list of resources at her command. As the contents of the ship's missile tubes flashed over the screen, her eyes widened.

"Sergeant Weber," she called into the open air. "Hold position and transmit your exact coordinates, help is on the way."

"Yes Ma'am," Kurz said, sounding very relieved, as the comm. channel closed and everyone on the bridge looked at Tessa oddly, especially her second in command and Kalinin.

"Captain?" Mardukas asked, curiously.

"Prepare the Arbalest to launch on the coordinates Mr. Weber gives us, and once that is done, we will move the de Danaan to this location." Saying this, she tapped a button on her control screen, causing the screen at the front of the room to show a local map with a set of cross-hairs marking a point near the coast.

"Ma'am?" Mardukas asked, though Kalinin's mouth quirked up into a half smile as he suddenly realized what she was planning.

"We've retrieved the coordinates," the radio technician reported.

"Good," Tessa nodded. "Now do it."

HR.

"Stupid piece of junk," Gauron muttered, as he stood, glaring at the Arm Slave that Amalgam laughingly called top of the line. Granted, it had performed reasonably for the first little while, but then, somehow, it had been outperformed by... her.

Well, it hadn't exactly been outperformed, since before that other A.S. had shown up to ruin his fun he'd been on the verge of killing her, but the fact that the overheat alarms had been blaring even then irritated him immensely.

Granted, he'd seen her destroy entire buildings when she was good and pissed, and had been on the receiving end of one of those attacks, but an Arm Slave could do the same thing, and with a lot less effort, especially one of the new generation ones.

Now, after one fight with her, or rather one fight with her and another, rather mediocre, one against Kashim, the damned thing was overheated and had damage to the left arm from the damned unknown M9's gunfire, and it would take another twenty minutes for it to cool down to the point of usability again.

"When this thing's back up and running I'll kill her, then I'll have to deal with Kashim," he decided, distracting himself from the disappointing test run with the thought of the battle to come.

HR.

Sitting at the small desk in her quarters, Captain Tessa Testerossa stared at a small black piglet, which was nervously staring back, and which she could swear was sweating under her gaze. While the de Danaan was enroute to the rendezvous point, she'd excused herself from the bridge for personal reasons, which translated, in this case, to interrogating an animal that couldn't talk, and she'd been trying to figure out what questions to ask it and how to get answers for the past five minutes.

"One bwee for yes, two bwees for no?" she finally offered, causing the animal to jump several inches off of the table at the suddenness of the question. Finally, it just nodded, and Tessa's eyebrow rose. "Well, that could work too," she admitted to herself, a little sheepishly.

"You're definitely smarter than a normal pig, if you can understand what I'm saying," she observed, and the pig nodded again. She wondered briefly if the thing was some form of robot, but discarded that solution as she realized that it had been examined by the ship's medical staff, and she was relatively sure they could tell the difference between blood and oil.

At the moment, she wasn't aware of any projects that were breeding super-intelligent pigs, though if there was one, she supposed there was no reason that someone would tell her. "Hmm," she finally said. "Some sort of brain transplant?" When the pig somehow managed to faceplant into the table, she frowned. "A Whispered pig?"

At this, the piglet looked at her in confused exasperation, before walking over to the side of the table, carefully being studied by Tessa as it did so, and knocking over her glass of tea. What happened next was a little too hard for the Mithril captain to follow, but it ended in her little desk breaking, and her in a tangle of arms and legs with another person.

"...you know, that was a really dumb idea now that I think about it," the person Tessa was laying under commented, in a nervous sounding female voice.

"What?" Tessa managed to ask, as the rather heavy weight on her chest moved, and she managed to sit up, noticing a girl with green eyes and dark hair, the pink bandanna that her pet pig had worn around its neck tied over her forehead. Instantly, the Mercenary leapt into action... or at least, she shuffled backwards into a wall as quickly as she could, pulling her service pistol out of a pocket and leveling it at the intruder. "Wh... who are you?" she demanded, shakily.

The dark haired girl had a nearly impossible to repress impulse to reach up and scratch the back of her neck, but decided against it as Tessa's gun hand looked rather shaky, and she wasn't sure if she'd feel worse about getting shot or having the other girl shoot herself in the leg. "Um, my name's Ino Hibiki," she said, hurriedly. "I didn't see anything!"

"What?" Tessa asked, confused.

"I know this sub's some big military secret and such, but I didn't see the missiles, and the Arm Slaves, and that big glass tube that you used to..." Ino immediately clamped a hand over her mouth, her eyes shifting nervously from Tessa to the door, and wondering if it was worth her modesty to try and get lost.

Tessa knew that the girl in front of her could be putting on an act to make her lower her guard, but the panicked babbling she'd just partaken in made the silver haired girl rather doubtful of that. Slowly, she stood, keeping the gun pointed as best she could, and walked over to her closet to get something for the other to put on. After the bandannaed girl had restored some modesty, she asked, "How did you get aboard this ship? We haven't been in port in several months."

"It's been months?" Ino asked, suddenly rather worried. "Well, I was..." She looked down at her hands, as they played with the buttons on the front of the suit jacket she'd been tossed. "I sort of ran away from home, but it was an accident."

"An accident?" Tessa asked, levelly, though the incredulity in the question was obvious from the look on her face.

"I was really mad at Dad," Ino explained. "It turns out this weird curse of his is inheritable, and I got it."

"That's why you were a pig," Tessa said, more than asked, getting a nod from the other.

"Right. Not only am I a pig, I'm a BOY pig!" Ino yelled angrily. "And all because of dad and his stupid Jusenkyo curse." Suddenly, she realized she was venting her grievances at a person who had a gun aimed at her and at least a few good reasons to shoot her, calming down slightly. "He got me so mad that I failed to take my guide pig with me when I left the house, and then I ended up in an engine room, or something," she explained sheepishly.

"I see," Tessa said, though her attention had wandered after Ino had talked about Jusenkyo curses. "You were a male pig, why was that?"

Ino shrugged, rather glad to have the subject changed to something other than her trespassing on some military super sub. "I don't know, Dad says I look exactly like he did when he first got the curse, but he's gotten a lot bigger since then."

"Oh," Tessa said, and then she shook her head. What she'd just thought of was rather interesting, and could be extremely important later, however she was currently dealing with what she was now pretty sure was a civilian on her ship, as she'd never seen anyone with acting that good, or a curse, for that matter. On top of this, the operation to rescue the URZU team and their passengers was going to start in an hour and twenty-seven minutes.

"I'm sorry," Tessa finally said. "But we're in a state of readiness right now and I don't have time to deal with you." As she moved, Ino's eyes widened. Tessa really didn't seem the type to just shoot someone or something, but she really didn't want to put that to the test, and as the other girl's gun hand started to move, she tensed up.

That was, of course, before the Mithril officer put her pistol down on her dresser and reached for an intercom panel. "Security to the captain's quarters, unauthorized personnel. Please use minimal force in apprehension."

Ino didn't move for several seconds, and probably would have stayed there, frozen in shock, if the door to the room hadn't flown open a minute later, revealing Commander Mardukas, panting heavily and with his hat knocked slightly to the side. "Madam Captain, are you all right? Were is he?" he demanded, roughly.

"Commander?" Tessa asked, surprised. "I only called for Security to escort this young lady to a holding cell until we can offload her."

"Oh," Mardukas said, catching sight of Ino and blinking. "Well, um, of course, Ma'am." Saying this, he quickly straightened his cap and stood to his usual attention. "I apologize for bothering you."

Tessa just looked oddly at the older man as he helped Ino up and out of the room.

HR.

"So, how is she?" Mao asked, as she took a sip from one of the hydration packs that had been pulled out of Kurz's A.S.'s survival kit and grimaced, wishing that Mithril would at least shell out enough to make the vitamin filled liquid taste like something other than dissolved chalk.

From the ground nearby, Kaname shook her head. "She's been muttering things," she admitted. "The fever's not going down, but the bandages are still good." She looked down at Ranma's pale, sweating face, and wiped her forehead with a towel.

"I can't believe she managed to hold that thing off that long," the sergeant major shook her head.

"What I want to know is where it is now," Sousuke replied, from her vantage point in a tree, peering into the murky woods nearby. "I doubt Kurz's shot damaged it that much."

"What, you doubt my abilities?" the sniper's voice came crackling from a radio the younger mercenary was holding. "It looked like it was retreating for another reason, though I'll admit..." He trailed off for a moment, which caused Mao to look away from Ranma.

"Urzu 6? What's wrong?" she asked, worriedly.

"Holy..." was about all the sniper got out, before his Arm Slave had backed into the clearing the others were in, and he'd put himself between them and the open area. Mao was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, when the sound of a tremendous explosion ripped through the area.

When the noise and dust had settled, the M9 moved out of the way to reveal a huge, deep trench in the ground with a shining white machine crouching at the end of it. "That's one hell of a taxi service," the blond muttered, surprised.

"I'm guessing it's to help us transport everyone out of here," Mao said. "Sousuke?"

"Got it," the red haired girl replied, leaping out of the tree and making a B-line for the white A.S.

"All right," Mao ordered. "I'm guessing that explosion's probably told some people we're here, and since our new machine doesn't look like it's got any weapons on it, Urzu 7, you transport Kaname and Ranma. Urzu 6, you're with me."

"Yes, ma'am," both of the other mercenaries replied, as Kaname looked on in confusion, and was startled when the white machine walked over to her and lowered a hand.

"Oh boy," she gulped, trying to fortify her stomach. "Here we go again."

END.

Well, that's all for now, folks. Please, Tell us what you think of this fic in a review.


	8. Chapter 7: Shining Finger Sword!

Chapter 7: Shining Finger Sword!

For the second time in one night, or maybe it was morning by this point, Kaname was holding desperately to a moving Arm Slave, which was running through the forest. This time the ride was much smoother, the white machine seeming to be much better at keeping itself steady than the Russian bear she'd previously been held in the hand of, but that was about the only improvement in the situation, as this time she was trying to keep a semi-conscious, delirious relative from rolling off of the thing's cupped hands, and was getting tired of being called a stupid panda.

"Just hold still, please," the teal haired girl whispered, as she grabbed Ranma's flailing arm, wincing as she noted a small blotch of red spreading under the bandage there. The older redhead seemed to hear her plea, settling down somewhat, and Kaname used the opportunity to look out past the shoulder of the Arbalest, noting that they were currently running across a rather flat area, the forest rapidly receding behind them.

Digging through one of the pockets in her labcoat, Kaname came up with a radio that had been given to her to replace the one she'd accidentally dropped in the water when the weird red A.S. had attacked, pushing the call button. "Do you know where we're going?" she asked, somewhat worried, as she was certain that she'd felt at least a few turns while they were in the forest, and she couldn't see anything of interest ahead.

"The coordinates are clear," Sousuke's businesslike voice returned quickly. "Please keep this frequency clear if possible."

"Oh," the Chidori girl muttered, turning the radio off just as Sousuke was about to say something that she couldn't catch. "Jerk." She let off a soft sigh, having actually gotten used to the motion of the A.S. enough to enjoy the scenery and tried to do so, forgetting the fact that her uncle was bleeding copiously right next to her and she'd been shot at at least a few times tonight.

This activity was interrupted, however, when Ranma started to move again, and Kaname turned to settle the delirious mercenary down. She was spectacularly unsuccessful, as the pigtailed martial artist managed to sit up straight, turning her head to the side and staring fixedly into the distance.

"Uncle Ranma, you're going to make your injuries worse," the younger girl said, unsure if she should try to push the other down or leave her where she was.

Abruptly, Ranma's eyes snapped to lock onto Kaname's, and the Chidori girl gulped loudly when she saw that they seemed perfectly clear. "He's here," she said, levelly.

"He's here?" Kaname asked, confused. "Who's he?"

"Gauron," Ranma said, simply, causing Kaname to blink in confusion, before the redhead fell backwards, almost sending herself off of the side of Arbalest's hand before Kaname grabbed her. Frowning worriedly, the teal haired girl looked down at her radio.

"Who cares if he doesn't want to talk to me," she grumbled, before picking the thing up, flicking the power switch and pushing transmit. "Sousuke? Uncle Ranma just said 'Gauron' is here,' whatever that means."

Inside of the new Arm Slave's cockpit, Sousuke's eyes widened. She knew that Ranma was delirious, but she also knew that he or she had some very unusual abilities. Frowning, she also noted that if anyone was in the area, Kaname's unsecured radio transmission had probably already given them away. "A.I, initiate active scan for hostiles in the area," she ordered, quickly.

"Yes, Ma'am," the Arbalest's computer reported, and Sousuke briefly let her eyebrow raise, as most units were programmed with a simple affirmative, as they very rarely had good enough vocal recognition routines to recognize gender. "Seven contacts detected," the voice came again, and a topographical map appeared in the bottom of the cockpit's main view screen, several blips lit up nearby.

"Send this to Urzu 6 and request an opinion," Sousuke ordered, frowning darkly, as she suddenly saw the blips beginning to converge rapidly.

Moments later, Mao's voice came over the comm, angrily. "How the hell did they find us?" she demanded, irritably. "Sousuke, dump the passengers somewhere safe, and keep watch over them. with your loadout, you aren't prepared for action and I wouldn't trust a shiny new design like that farther than I could throw it."

"Yes, Ma'am," Sousuke replied, ignoring the fact that, for some reason, one of the cockpit's side windows was flashing a weapons manifest consisting of two anti-personnel Gatling cannons, an Arm Slave knife, and some sort of throwing projectile, along with a bright red exclamation mark.

HR.

"This is gunna be fun," Gauron licked his lips as the Codarl ran at the head of a squad of RK-92s, and he replayed the last message that they had managed to intercept. It had been the target, and she'd apparently been talking to Kashim. Even better, the bitch was there, too.

As an active radar signature was detected reflecting off of the red Arm Slave, its pilot grinned, letting the ECM suite zero in on the target and display it in front of him. "I'll get rid of the noisy one, you six cover me and take care of any interference," he ordered.

After getting a set of rather irritated acknowledgments, Gauron accelerated as quickly as he could, bursting out of the forest and into a field to see a white machine kneeling down, apparently moving something on the ground. "Too easy," he smirked, bringing up the gun he'd seized from one of the base's RK-92s and opening fire.

Unfortunately for him, the white Arm Slave apparently still had a lock on him with its radar, and it managed to roll out of the way just as the shells passed through the air that it had once occupied.

"Hey Kashim, that you?" Gauron asked, as he saw out of the corner of his eye that his six 'escorts' were engaging that damned annoying M9 which had shot at him earlier, along with some crazy woman hanging onto the machine's shoulder with a pair of assault rifles.

The white Arm Slave didn't respond to Gauron's comment, merely recovering from its dive, coming back at the brown haired man with its anti-personnel guns blazing and bouncing off of Codarl's armor even without the help of its Lambda driver.

"Oh now come on, that tickles!" the insane mercenary laughed, returning fire and grinning widely as the Mithril machine rapidly began dodging his fire. "Come on now, tell me you can do better than that!"

Several seconds later, when he saw that the white machine was just insisting on dodging his fire and returning it ineffectively, Gauron frowned darkly. "Now, now, this just isn't any fun," he grumbled. "How am I supposed to enjoy killing you when I can't even see your face, and you won't stand still?"

Turning slowly, though keeping an eye on the white Arm Slave to make sure it didn't close to melee range, his frown vanished when he noticed two figures reclining under a small rock outcropping near where he'd first seen the enemy. "Hey, I wonder, is that the little girl I was sent for?" he asked, grinning as he saw one of the figures flinching back into the grotto. "And I bet it's one of your friends with her, hmm white knight? Wonder what happens if I shoot 'em? I'm sure I could aim well enough to miss the girl... probably."

"Don't touch them," the voice wasn't yelled, but it was sudden enough to make the unbalanced man almost jump, especially since it wasn't the one he was expecting.

Looking over to his communications screen, Gauron's eyes widened as he saw a familiar face staring back at him, her eyes the cold, steel blue that they were whenever she was serious. "What?" he demanded, angrily. "I thought... where's Kashim?"

"Shut up!" The redhead on the communications screen said, and the older man was just barely in time to dodge as the white A.S. flew past him, knife extended to slice off Codarl's head.

"Heh, well, this is a surprise," he observed, spinning and letting a shot loose at the white machine's back, which it rolled underneath. "I could have sworn rammin an A.S. knife up your ass would kill you, but here you are, back for more. Unfortunately, you're not the one I wanted to fight, now where's Kashim? Honestly, did you actually think that you could pilot an Arm Slave well enough to beat me?" He began a long, arrogant laugh... right at about the time the white A.S. turned, letting fly with its knife and smashing Codarl in the left arm.

Abruptly, sirens began wailing, and every systems indicator in that appendage went red, and then black, before Gauron's wide eyes.

"I believe you'll find I'm an expert in piloting Arm Slaves," the redhead on the comm. screen said, her face completely devoid of Ranma's usual cocky expression.

"God damn it!" the psychotic mercenary snarled. "There's another one, and she's just as damned good!" He knew full well that Ranma couldn't beat him in an Arm Slave, or at least she couldn't five years ago, about the only thing he'd ever held over her head. She most definitely couldn't pull off the move that had just disabled his arm, as she insisted on not using weapons whenever possible, saying something about them being 'too easy to kill with.' "Feh, well if you wanna play it that way," he snarled, "activate the Lambda Driver."

A confused expression crossed the face of the redhead on the other end of Gauron's comm. line, as Codarl's computer acknowledged, and he could feel the sudden, energetic rush of the Lambda system kicking on. "Now, whoever you are, I'm afraid this suddenly isn't fun anymore," the brown haired man growled, charging at the white Arm Slave with a red corona building around him.

HR.

Boredom wasn't usually part of a Hibiki's life. Even for Ino, who had spent most of it on her family's pig farm or going to school, the mere act of raising Sumo pigs, of watching Katsunishiki take the top prize in the tournaments every year, or watching her father getting smashed through a wall before getting up as if nothing had happened, was interesting. As a result of this, the black and pink haired girl was going slowly, inexorably insane as she stared across a tiny, grey walled room at a set of bars, on the other side of which was a narrow, grey walled corridor.

She'd tried getting lost, but the room was far too small, and there was nothing in it but sanitary facilities and a bench. She'd gone through the pockets of the uniform jacket she was wearing, but had only found 20 franks, some lint, and an identification card, which she'd read three times, including the small print legal notice on the bottom, before tossing it at the bars. By this point, she was contemplating climbing up on the sink and changing back and forth from cursed form just to pass the time.

"Kami, I'm bored," she muttered, gazing up at the ceiling. "How long have I been in here? When am I going to get out? When am I going to talk to someone? Come to think of it, when am I going to get something to eat?" She sighed, slumping back against the wall, when a chuckle broke her silent sulking. Looking over sharply, she noticed a dark skinned man wearing a cast and carrying a cane leaning against the wall.

"You've only been in here for an hour, you know," he said, conversationally.

"It's... only been an hour?" the young girl asked, looking at the older man with eyes half full of tears. At his nod, she contemplated if she could knock herself unconscious on one of the walls.

"So, what're you in for?" the man asked, casually, extracting a small piece of jerky from his pocket and unwrapping it, before breaking off half and tossing it to her.

"Um, I followed the captain around for the last week," Ino said, before eagerly beginning to chew the food she'd been given.

"And that got you thrown in here because..." the black man asked, raising one eyebrow.

"She didn't know I was doing it," the Hibiki girl said, sheepishly.

"How did you..." the man stopped himself, shaking his head. "Come to think of it, that's probably classified so high I'll never see it in the rest of my life, but suddenly I'm a lot more embarrassed for getting this duty by letting a recruit shoot me in the foot."

"You got shot in the foot?" the dark haired girl asked, curiously.

"Look, it's a really embarrassing story, and I'd rather not tell it," her guard deferred, shaking his head.

"Come on, I'm dieing of boredom here, please tell me," she begged, leaning forward and looking as cute as she possibly could.

"Damn it," the large black man said, before sighing. "Okay, but if you tell anyone, I'll..." He shrugged. "Probably do nothing, since you'll be out of here in a week regardless. Anyhow, I was at the training base in Scotland, and..."

HR.

Kaname bit her lip as she saw Sousuke staggering back from yet another onslaught from the glowing red Arm Slave. The advantage in the combat seemed to be running back and forth like a particularly destructive game of seesaw, as Sousuke had at first seemed totally outmatched, and then he had managed to take one of his enemy's arms off, before it had started glowing and outflanking him at every turn.

Unfortunately, the seesaw now appeared to have a ten ton weight on the red machine's side, as Sousuke hadn't landed a blow since the arm had been destroyed, and Kurz and Mao were busy closer to the forest, engaging the three Savages that were still standing.

To make things worse, as she watched the battle, the Chidori girl's view seemed to begin to distort, strange lines and numbers flickering on the edges of her awareness.

As the red machine effortlessly deflected a rapid knife attack from Sousuke, and a dome of crackling energy formed around it, she suddenly couldn't see for equations, trying to shake them out of her view, but failing. For a brief second, she wondered if she was still in the tank, with that crazy woman trying to give her sleep learning courses from hell, when Ranma's muttering voice broke through her thoughts. She missed what the redhead said at first, but just managed to tune back in to the real world, somewhat, when she spoke again. "Chi amplification, or something... Ryoga, no, too angry..."

Her conscious mind discarded that comment as yet another nonsensical thing said by a feverish individual, but suddenly, the equations in her field of view seemed to click into place, dumping knowledge into her mind as though she'd just broken the biggest study block in recorded history.

Her eyes widened, as she suddenly recognized what the red machine's glowing energy aura was, and she noted that on Sousuke's machine's back was a recognizable assembly. "Lambda driver," she whispered, before picking up her radio.

"Sousuke!" she called, quickly. "Activate the Lambda driver!"

"The what?" Sousuke asked, as she leapt away from Gauron, taking a defensive position and watching her opponent carefully.

Kaname didn't have to respond, as Arbalest's computer did it for her. "Lambda Driver is capable of activation. Activate?"

Normally, activating an untested system on a machine she'd never piloted would be about the same as aiming her pistol at her forehead and pulling the trigger, but since Gauron seemed very willing to do that without her input, the Sagara girl shrugged.

"Activate it," she ordered, and abruptly, Arbalest began to hum.

"Sousuke?" Gauron asked, turning from the white Arm Slave to Kaname. "Girlie, you must be confused. Maybe it's a good thing we're planning to rewire that pretty little head of yours."

Abruptly, the hum in Sousuke's cockpit began to rise in volume, and a set of gauges on a side panel began to rise along with the sound. "You're not going to touch her," the Mithril mercenary said, calmly.

"What? She thinks you're Kashim," the brown haired man said. "Come to think of it, who the hell are you?" He shrugged, and then shook his head. "It doesn't really matter, I guess. I'll just kill you and your friends, then take the girlie over there and hunt him down."

"Sousuke, you hear that?" Kaname asked, loudly. "He plans on killing your friends and Uncle Ranma. He plans on killing them all, and then he's going to take me back to have... things... hooked up to me. Do you want that, Sousuke?"

"Look, lady, I get you're confused, but STOP calling her Kashim!" Gauron roared, stepping towards Kaname and raising his knife. This turned out to be a mistake, as the redhead in the white Arm Slave responded to Kaname's question.

"No, I don't want that," she muttered, suddenly recalling the remnants of a rebel camp several years ago, Gauron standing in the open hatch of an Arm Slave and laughing down at the bodies. Without really having to think about it, she could see them slowly being replaced with Mao, slumped over a machine gun emplacement, Kurz laying dead on top of a stone hut, and Ranma, his body blown half away in the middle of the ground.

The last image she would rather not think about, as it was Kaname, being held up by the hair, while the brown haired man grinned down at her sadistically. "I won't let that happen!"

"What the hell?" Gauron managed to get out, before a bright blue light exploded from Sousuke's Arm Slave, washing the entire surrounding area, and seeming to wipe the Codarl out of existence without even slowing down.

HR.

Nabiki Mihama really, really needed a cup of coffee as she stood next to her car at Narita International Airport, trying to blink away the tiny orange cat-things that were floating around in her field of view. By this point, she was pretty sure that she fell under the category of legally intoxicated without having taken a drink, as she stared balefully at the arrivals and departures board, waiting for her younger sister's flight to appear on it.

The last time this had happened, ten years ago, it had involved Kasumi, Herb of the Musk and a marriage proposal. She hoped, for the sake of whoever had perpetrated this kidnapping, that this incident wasn't that stupid or she'd help her sister beat the hell out of them.

The businesswoman struggled to hold back an expansive yawn, and leaned against the side of her vehicle for just a moment. Closing her eyes and letting herself relax in the cool air of the early morning, she was abruptly shaken, jumping several inches into the air.

"Nabiki, are you all right?" she rapidly opened her eyes, only to see Akane looking at her, concerned, and the sun beginning to brighten the horizon behind the former youngest Tendo daughter.

"I didn't just fall asleep on my car, did I?" she asked, embarrassed, and was even more so when Akane smirked at her. "Never mind that," she quickly said. "And I mean it, or I'm not letting you stay at my place."

Abruptly, Akane's face lost its small grin, and she turned serious. "I'm not going to your place," she answered. "I'm headed to Kaname's."

"Oh, right," Nabiki said, shaking her head and chiding herself, before opening the car door and disengaging the locks.

"Have you heard anything else about her since the CNN report?" the blue-black haired woman asked, concerned, as she climbed into the passenger seat of the sports car.

"Not really," the brunette replied. "Apparently the kids were recovered, but they're keeping really tight lipped on the names and status, so..." She noticed Akane gulp nervously, and would really like to comfort her, but had no idea how to do it. "I've got some people I know trying to figure out where Kaname is, but it's taking a while because they're busy with something big and they won't tell me what it is."

"Hmm," Akane nodded, seemingly distracted by the city lights as her sister's car sped through traffic.

"So I noticed he didn't come," this comment was unusually tentative for Nabiki, which meant that it sounded perfectly casual and innocent.

"Apparently everyone over there's going nuts," Akane replied. "Russia and China are muttering about starting a shooting war over this incident."

"Urk," Nabiki gulped, now rather understanding why Akane's husband wasn't around, as she slowly turned into Kaname's district. "Don't worry, I've got someone set to notify me if they find out anything about Kaname."

"Thanks, Nabiki," Akane said, sighing and leaning back in her seat. The businesswoman really wished that she could join her sister in relaxation, but as she almost hit a cat, and then a garbage can, she quickly refocused on the road.

HR.

"Ma'am, Urzu 6 and the ARX-7 have been successfully recovered," a crewman reported from a station near the front of de Danaan's bridge, causing Tessa to sigh in relief.

"Did anyone see us when we were surfaced?" the grey haired girl asked, concerned, but was relieved when she received a shake of the head from a radar operator. "Did their injured passenger make it?"

"Yes, Ma'am, she's being looked after in the infirmary, and Angel is being moved to a holding area," Kalinin reported, crisply.

Tessa nodded, reclining slightly in her chair and resisting the urge to fall asleep, as by this point she'd been awake for about twenty hours. "All right," she said, sharply. "Order medical to conduct these tests, and inform me of the results when I wake up."

She produced a small piece of paper from a pocket on her uniform, handing it to Commander Mardukas. "Commander, you have the bridge."

"Yes, Ma'am," the older man said, saluting as the young girl exited the room, and then looking down at the paper she had given him. Reading it over, he raised an eyebrow. "Paternity test?"

"Excuse me?" Kalinin asked, curiously.

Mardukas was tempted to dismiss the captain's last order as her just being too tired, but shrugged. An order was an order, and both Sousuke and Ranma had given them permission to do things like this when they'd signed the paperwork. That was, of course, if Lieutenant Commander Kalinin didn't have Ranma fired for the troop transport stowaway stunt... possibly out of a torpedo tube.

END.

Sousuke: Take this, my Love, My Hatred, and ALL OF MY SORROW!

Kaname: Um, that's the wrong giant robot...

Sousuke: Not a problem.

Gauron: I'm not dead yet...

Kaname: Oh shut up, you'll be stone dead in a minute.

Gauron: But I'm getting better!

Sorry about that, folks. Please read and review!


	9. Chapter 8: The Necessary Evil

Chapter 8: The Necessary Evil.

"So," Lieutenant Commander Kalinin said, as he reclined in a chair in his small office, three members of Urzu group in front of him. "A radio malfunction?"

"That's right, sir!" Kurz said, crisply, trying to conceal the fact that he was sweating profusely, and only keeping himself from shaking due to his years of sniper training.

"A radio malfunction that happened to clear up just as you found the rest of your team, as I understand it," the grey haired man said, looking over the communication logs from the mission.

Kurz was about to open his mouth and try to explain that, when Mao spoke up instead. "I repaired the antenna array when he got to us, sir."

"You do know that the malfunction was rather convenient, and came from no obvious damage suffered during the extraction, correct?" Kalinin asked, levelly. "Also, if I should happen to order a diagnostic on Urzu 6 and find that its radio is working perfectly..."

"The radio wasn't functioning, sir," Sousuke abruptly interrupted his commanding officer, earning a raised eyebrow from the older man. "I saw Sergeant Major Mao working in the M9."

"I see," Kalinin reached up and rubbed his forehead. "That is all, and I will be expecting full reports by 1800 tonight, is that understood?"

"Yes, sir!" all three Urzu group members replied, before turning and leaving the office. Kalinin looked at the closed door for a long moment, before retrieving a piece of paper from beneath the radio transcripts with the heading "Urzu 6 equipment briefing" and dumping it into the shredder.

"Bunch of idiots," he grumbled, before another file caught his interest, and he picked it up to see the image of a man whose smirk was irritating even from a picture. He couldn't really do anything about the blatant disobedience to orders that Kurz had just gotten away with, especially since he would now have to punish half of his teammates for collaboration, but Ranma, there was someone he could deal with.

Opening the file, he flipped through it to the report the medical staff had made when the pigtailed Intel officer had been stabilized about an hour earlier, and winced. He wasn't entirely sure the other would even be conscious, given the injuries displayed, even with his ridiculous ability to heal from a near miss by a mortar shell in only about half an hour.

As he was just about to put off rebuking Ranma for a day or so, the computer on his desk chimed, and he reached over to deactivate the screen saver. The message that appeared then was from medical, about Ranma, and stated that she was awake, though indicated that she didn't want to get out of sickbay as quickly as possible, which they judged as a bad sign given her usual behavior.

This was something that just made de Danaan's ground forces commander's eyebrow rise again, until he saw the last few lines of the message. "DNA Sample analysis complete. Samples B and D are identical, and samples A, B, C and D relation confirmed."

Kalinin sat in stunned silence for a moment, before he looked up to see the names attached to the DNA samples. "...what?" he asked, in a perfect deadpan, before standing from his desk, grabbing Ranma's record under his arm and walking out of the room, letting the door slam on the way out.

He was half way down the hall, preparatory to questioning the martial artist, when he realized that a probably unconscious person in a hospital bed wasn't inclined to answer any questions, and he diverted to the ship's practice range.

HR.

"How exactly did you end up doing this to yourself?" Ranma really wanted to tell the blonde woman who was sitting next to her bed to shut up, but was slightly too doped up on pain killers to really bother. This was saying something, as they had to use something rather similar to horse tranquilizers to break through the chemical immunity she'd built up over the years. "Seriously, you look like you lost a fight with Wolverine." It should be noted that the woman was flipping through the most recent issue of The X-ilerating X-Men.

"Could beat that idiot, easy," the redhead finally responded.

"Right," the blonde rolled her eyes, before putting the book aside. "Maybe I shouldn't be asking you about this sort of thing when you're higher than a kite."

"That's probably a good idea." This comment didn't come from Ranma, but de Danaan's chief physician. The black woman shook her head. "I've seen that bo... girl," she shrugged, "come back with some pretty bad injuries, but this is the first time I've ever had her sit still long enough for us to get a good look at them."

"Yeah, but this is Ranma, he'll be up again in a few days, right?" the blonde asked, worriedly.

"Miss..." the doctor asked, glancing at the woman's name tag. "Hikari, this is bad enough that we'll probably have to transfer Ranma to another facility, just because we don't have nearly enough replacement plasma, and the sickbay's not exactly intended for long stays in intensive care."

Ranma's mission controller gulped as she heard that, turning back to the redhead, who had gone back to staring at the ceiling. "Never mind Wolverine, it was probably the Hulk," she muttered, sourly.

HR.

"Would you stop pacing around?" Nabiki grumbled, as she and her younger sister stood in the waiting room of one of the largest hospitals in Chofu, the latter intermittently glowing a shade of green that would challenge Ryoga's better Shi Shi Hokodan attempts.

"What if she isn't one of the ones who made it?" the blue-black haired woman asked, wringing her hands, and Nabiki was pretty sure she'd heard a cracking noise the last time.

"Then you working yourself up to a stay in the psych ward isn't going to help," the former middle Tendo responded, practically. "Besides, the news report said they all made it."

Akane let off an explosive sigh, before slumping down in a seat next to her sister. Of course, unlike Nabiki, she'd forgotten to bring anything to keep herself occupied, and she'd been here since early this morning, when someone had finally called to tell her where her daughter 'probably' was.

"Mrs. Chidori?" a voice cut in on various horrific situations that Akane's subconscious was busily dreaming up, just about at the time when she was getting to the ones about gruesome dismemberment. "Your daughter is awake, and you may see her now."

Nabiki looked up at that statement, about to thank the doctor who'd said it, when a gust of wind abruptly blew her short hair, and the door at the end of the waiting room flew open with a loud crash. Looking over to her side, she wasn't terribly surprised when she saw that Akane wasn't there, and her chair was tipped over. "I bet she forgot to get the room number," she muttered.

HR.

"Kaname!" She rolled over, trying to get away from the loud noise. Her head hurt, and there was a searing pain running down her arms and legs, but the voice sounded familiar and very scared. "Kaname, where are you?"

She reluctantly lifted her head, cracking open her eyes to wince at the light, and looked around for the source of the voice just as it called again, and there was a loud crashing noise. "Kanam... Ranma?"

Her vision cleared slightly, and she saw a woman standing at the door to her hospital room, a surprised look on her face. "Hey Akane," she croaked, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, finished with "Fancy meeting you here, of all places."

Akane blinked. The last time she'd seen Ranma, he'd barely said a word, and the gist of things was 'No offense, but I'd rather not talk to you.' Well, it would have been, aside from the fact that Ranma was never capable of saying anything without giving offense.

Now she found him, in cursed form, and laying in a hospital bed with at least three needles stuck to various parts of her arms. "What happened to you?" she found herself asking, her worry for Kaname put aside for a moment.

"Lots of people keep askin me that," Ranma replied. "Turns out diving out of an aircraft 'n then fighting a giant robot's a bad idea."

"If you didn't want to tell me, you could have just said so," Akane said, crossing her arms and remembering exactly why she'd decided to move on after high school.

"Huh?" Ranma asked, unable to figure out why Akane had reacted like that, especially since her head was still fogged with pain medication.

As Akane was about to snort, turn around and exit, she was interrupted by a nurse with black hair walking in with an envelope. "Oh, I didn't know you had a guest," the younger woman said, surprised.

"I'm just leaving," Akane said, as the nurse set the envelope on Ranma's side table.

"Sorry but they wanted you to know how horribly disappointed they were in you as soon as you could read it," Mao whispered into Ranma's ear, and the pigtailed martial artist groaned. "We'll try and cover for you, but we're already dealing with Kalinin probably firing Kurz."

"Yeah, well, at least he probably won't use actual bullets on him," Ranma retorted, bringing a chuckle from the sergeant major, before she turned to exit the room, and ran straight into a blue glowing Akane.

"Um... yes?" she asked, somewhat nervously.

The youngest Tendo bit back her irrational jealousy over some nurse and a guy, currently girl, she'd gotten over eighteen years ago, and asked her question. "Do you know where Kaname Chidori is?"

"Oh, yes," Mao said, deciding that she would charitably dismiss the blue glowing as a result of her sleep deprivation. "I'll take you to her."

HR.

"You're just like your mom, you know that?" Nabiki Mihama drawled, as she sat at Kaname's bedside, shaking her head slowly.

"I've noticed," Kaname grumbled, staring off through the window at the morning sun. "So you don't know what happened to Sousuke and the others?"

"No idea," Nabiki confessed. "Akane and I were here, waiting for you to be ready for visitors, but she sort of ran off when she heard and I haven't seen her since."

"She left?" Kaname asked, looking somewhat hurt.

"No, I mean, she ran off through the hospital, yelling for you," the brown haired woman explained, a sweat drop rolling down the back of her neck. "She's been worried sick about you all night."

Kaname nodded, not sure how she was supposed to feel about that. On one level, it was good to hear that her mom was concerned about her, but making someone worry so much wasn't exactly a good thing. "Oh," she muttered, looking down at her hands clasped in the covers.

"Well, it's probably a good thing," Nabiki admitted, as the door began to creep open behind her, unnoticed. "Your mom would probably have a heart attack if she found out you were experimented on, chased through the forest by Russian Arm Slaves, and watched Ranma almost kill himself out of his usual idiotic heroics."

"Wait..." a voice came from behind the brown haired woman's back, and she reached up to rub her forehead as she recognized it. "You mean he was telling the truth?"

Turning as Kaname smiled nervously at her mother, Nabiki saw Akane gaping at the two of them, while a dark haired nurse behind her was looking distinctly nervous. "I bet'cha heard all of that, huh?" she asked, resigned.

Akane just numbly nodded, before recalling exactly why she was there and rushing in past Nabiki to look intensely into Kaname's eyes. The older and younger women with varying shades of blue hair looked at each other for a few moments before Akane abruptly threw her arms around her daughter, hugging her tightly. "Are you all right, Kaname-chan?" she asked, worriedly.

"I... I think you're crushing my ribs," the Chidori girl gasped out, her arms flailing from under her mother's hug.

"Oh, whoops," Akane muttered, stepping back from her daughter and looking her up and down, letting out a sigh of relief when she reassured herself that there was nothing visibly wrong with her.

Mother, daughter, and aunt turned when they heard the distinctive click of a door closing. "I'm sorry," the nurse started, "but I am sure there must be some mistake." Taking a step further into the room, she continued, "Miss Chidori was not experimented on, nor was she rescued by a Ranma or any Arm Slaves."

"Sergeant Major Mao?" Kaname asked, confused.

Melissa Mao groaned, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. "Why did they send me to do this?" she complained, irritably.

As Akane and Kaname still looked confused, Nabiki cleared her throat. "Let me guess, she's to deny everything?"

"Well, um, yes, actually," Mao responded. Deciding to drop the charade, she continued, "We've put measures in place to convince the people who took Kaname that she isn't a viable target anymore, but if she talks about this, they could come after her in order to stop her from talking about them."

"Oh, I get it," Kaname said, her eyes lighting up. "Like a James Bond movie or something."

"Pretty close," Mao agreed, getting rather exasperated by the whole situation.

Kaname nodded, before the presence of the dark haired mercenary reminded her of something. "Hey, if you're here, are Uncle Ranma and the others?" she asked, hopefully.

"I saw Ranma a few minutes ago," Akane admitted, looking sheepish and hoping that Kaname wouldn't ask any more about him.

"How was he? Was he all right?" Kaname asked, as her mother winced, not wanting to admit that she hadn't paid much attention, getting irritated at what she thought was an obvious lie, and then apparent flirtation that was now looking like something else.

"Well, um," she started, praying for something to save her, when the door abruptly issued a loud click, swinging open to reveal a brown haired boy in Kaname's school's male uniform, holding what looked like a set of lock picks.

"Hello, Chidori-san," the boy said, brightly as he slipped the picks into a pocket. "How are you feeling?"

"Sousuke?" the Chidori girl asked, blinking at the boy oddly. "I'm fine."

"I am glad to hear that," the boy started, and Nabiki noted that he seemed to tense up, delivering the next few words as though he were delivering a memorized speech. "I've been worried about you since you fainted on the plane." Relaxing, he looked around. "Also, was the door locked for a reason?"

"Sousuke?" Mao asked, nudging the door closed behind him.

"Yes Ma'am?" the boy replied, quickly.

"They know," she returned, wincing.

"Wow, you're about as bad at lying as Ranma-kun," Nabiki said with a smirk. "Let me guess, this is the guy who turns into a girl?"

"Yeah," Kaname said, as Sousuke looked around, confused, and wondered if he could give Kaname the first aid kit he'd brought yet.

HR.

Captain Tessa Testerossa and Commander Mardukas strode quickly through the corridors of the Tuatha de Danaan. As they walked, the young captain kept muttering quietly, with only her companion able to hear her. "How could I have forgotten?" she berated herself.

Also speaking softly, Mardukas replied, "Don't be too hard on yourself, Ma'am. You were occupied with a major operation that pressed you to your physical limits." He left a pause before continuing, "It is only natural for something as non-critical as this to slip your mind."

"But it's my responsibility as captain, and I should have seen to this as soon as I had finished with the after action reports," the grey haired girl insisted.

"Had you attempted to handle this matter then, without taking any time to prepare, we wouldn't have been able to find a... palatable way to deal with it," the older man reminded her as they neared the brig.

With a slight lessening of her worried frown, Tessa said, "I suppose you're right. I just hope she can forgive me."

As the two came up to the hatch leading into the brig, the guard posted next to it snapped to attention with an audible crack as joints popped from the sudden movement. With a salute he barked, "Ma'am, Sir! What can I do for you?"

"There was a prisoner brought in around twenty-three hours ago," Mardukas began.

"Oh, you must mean Miss Hibiki," the guard cheerfully cut in before remembering who he was talking to. "My apologies."

"That's quite all right," Tessa decided. "We would like to speak with Miss Hibiki, please."

"Of course, Ma'am," the man said, hurriedly opening the hatch. "Sergeant Smith is watching her now."

"Thank-you."

As the captain and the commander entered the brig, they were caught off guard by the lively voice of a young woman. "And it's always fun watching Dad spar with the pigs, especially Katsunishiki."

"From what you've said, I can only imagine," the rather amused voice of Smith replied. She added, "If I'm ever out that way, I'll have to try to catch a peek."

"Yeah," Ino agreed, "but it has nothing on when Dad and his friend, Ranma, spar."

"You know Sergeant Ranma?" Tessa asked, stepping into view.

"Ma'am!" Smith all but yelped as she shot to attention from where she was reclining.

"Sergeant," Mardukas said as he followed Tessa into the brig, "Please leave us."

"Yes Sir," Smith said, snapping a salute before she left the brig.

"Does this mean I can go home now?" Ino asked plaintively from behind the bars of her cell.

"Unfortunately," Mardukas began, immediately causing the girl to visibly wilt, "there are a few complications."

"I really am sorry about all of this," Tessa insisted. "But we really can't just let you go home. the de Danaan is a highly classified vessel, after all. At the very least, we would have to have someone follow you and ensure that you do not talk about anything you have seen."

Ino barely held back a snicker at that idea. "Trying to follow a Hibiki is like trying to catch snowflakes," she smirked. "It never works for long."

"Yes," Mardukas agreed, "we are aware of your family's... tendency to get lost. As such, an alternate solution would be advisable."

"Let me guess," Ino deadpanned, "you already have everything set up."

"Indeed. Except for certain highly unusual circumstances, civilians are not to even know of the Tuatha de Danaan's existence, let alone be privy to anything you have seen while aboard."

"I'm sorry," Ino interrupted. "I just want to get out of this cell. Can you get to the point, please?"

"Very well," Mardukas assented with a brief nod. "Our proposal is for you to sign on with Mithril, specifically on the de Danaan, so that we are capable of assuming that you had the security clearance to see what you've seen."

"You want to hire me?" Ino asked, her voice tinged with disbelief. "What, as ship's pet pig?"

"I was assuming more as an assistant," Mardukas said, earning a surprised look from Tessa. "The captain stays aboard this ship for long periods of time, and I'm aware that she has little friendly companionship, since everyone aboard is both older and lower ranked than she is."

"Commander Mardukas..." Tessa started, fidgeting with her hands.

"Captain, do you disagree with this course of action?" the commander asked, looking down at the grey haired girl in concern.

"I suppose not," Tessa said, considering. "It would be easy to get Ino-san out of trouble, if she's willing to do it."

"I suppose it's okay," Ino said, rather confused. "If you don't mind that I might randomly get lost or something."

"I'm afraid that would constitute a breach of contract," Mardukas said, with a straight face, "However since you haven't agreed to a payment contract, there would be no monetary consequences."

"I'll do it," Ino finally agreed, after several seconds of thought.

"Understood," Mardukas said, before turning to Tessa. "Captain, since this has been mostly taken care of, perhaps you would like to return to the bridge while I handle the logistical side of things?"

"Thank you, Commander," Tessa nodded, before turning and leaving the room.

"So, um, does this mean I get let out of here?" Ino asked, hopefully.

"It does," Mardukas nodded, "just as soon as I arrange quarters for you." As the girl was sighing and slumping down on the bench inside of her cell, the older man continued, increasing the volume of his voice slightly. "However, I should inform you that this incident has put you in a position to be very close to the captain. If you should use this position in any way to hurt or betray her, let me assure you that no matter how lost you get, Mithril is fully capable of tracking you down. Is that understood?"

Ino gulped. "Um... yes, sir!" she said, instinctively managing a sloppy salute.

"Good," The commander said, leaning back and giving no impression that, just a moment before, he was doing a good job of emulating the Tendo demon head technique. "Now I'll begin processing your paperwork and you'll have quarters within the hour."

"Thank you, sir," Ino said, still a little off balance from before, but recovering quickly as the brown haired man turned and exited the brig. As she looked at the bars, she suddenly yelled, "Saotome Ranma, this is all your fault!" She stopped for a moment, blinked, and shook her head. She didn't care what her father said, that phrase didn't seem to relieve any stress at all.

HR.

"I can't believe it's taken me this long," Ranma grumbled, as he forced himself off of the edge of the hospital bed, turning and dropping heavily into a wheel chair.

"It's only been three days," Sousuke replied, from where he was standing next to the door to the hospital room. "Major injuries I've sustained or treated usually took much longer to heal than that."

"Yeah," Ranma winced, looking down at the cast that still covered one leg, along with bandages which were hidden under the rest of his clothes. "It's just irritating, that's all. You and Kaname settle back into school all right?"

At that question, Sousuke's expression darkened. "I would rather not talk about it," he mumbled, quietly.

Ranma's eyebrow rose as he began slowly pushing his chair away from the bed. "That bad, huh?"

"Miss Chidori's mother is... very worried about her safety," the younger Mithril operative said, not having to explain as Ranma nodded. Seeing the difficulty the older agent was having in movement, he walked over, grabbed the handles at the back of the chair, and began pushing Ranma out of the room.

"Hey," the martial artist objected, before sighing, realizing that he probably needed the help for once. "Thanks."

"Not a problem," Sousuke replied, before looking back inside to ensure that nothing had been left, and noticing a white envelope sitting on the bedside table. Walking back inside to get it, his eyes widened. "Ranma," he said, surprised. "There appears to be a set of orders from Mithril here which you haven't opened."

"Oh, right," the pigtailed man winced. "Sergeant Major Mao delivered them, but I wasn't really up to reading and forgot about 'em."

"The orders inside may have been important," Sousuke said, worriedly.

Ranma rolled his eyes. "If they had orders for someone who spent the better part of the last couple days in a medication induced sleep, Mithril's more nuts than the last outfit I worked for." Seeing Sousuke's steady look, he sighed. "Just open it, okay?"

The young Sergeant was considering objecting on the grounds that Ranma's orders may contain need to know information, though he had to admit that the older man had a point about Mithril likely not using him as a combat asset. Slipping a knife from where he kept it tucked into one sleeve, Sousuke slit the message open, withdrawing several pieces of paper.

"One of these is your current operational orders," he read. "You've been assigned two months of mandatory sick leave."

Ranma winced. "Yeah, Kalinin's pissed at me," he grumbled. "It should only take a couple weeks for me to heal from this."

Sousuke briefly wondered if the other man was still somehow delirious, but continued reading regardless. "The second sheet allows you to continue living in the apartment that has been set up as a forward monitoring base for Miss. Chidori, in order to support me as her bodyguard, and the third..."

"What about the third?" Ranma asked, looking back to see Sousuke looking at a sheet of paper, the other two having fallen from his fingers. After a few moments of staring with an indecipherable look on his face, and right before Ranma was going to ask what was wrong with him, Sousuke dropped the paper he'd been reading on the older mercenary's lap.

Most of the sheet contained pretty standard medical information, however there was a section at the bottom which was rather unusual, as he was pretty sure genetic testing wasn't on Mithril's usual post-combat examination list. As Ranma read the results of the test, his eyes widened as Sousuke's had.

"I should be much more surprised than this," Ranma muttered, after regaining the ability to talk.

"Indeed," Sousuke replied.

"We're probably in shock," Ranma offered.

"Most likely," Sousuke replied.

"Want to go back home?" Ranma asked, and was only answered by Sousuke picking up the papers he'd previously dropped and grabbing the handles at the back of his wheelchair, beginning to push him out of the room.

END.

Hope this chapter was an interesting read. Sorry for the lack of action and such, but, well, next chapter will be sort of the same, actually... Behemoth is coming up soon, though.

Omake.

"What about the third?" Ranma asked, looking back to see Sousuke looking at a sheet of paper, the other two having fallen from his fingers.

"He... He died, fighting Orochimaru!"

Note: This Omake began a discussion of a fic that Weebee, the spoil sport that he is, refuses to even consider writi... Airstrike No Jutsu!

Ah, damn it!


	10. Chapter 9: Adams Family Reunion

Note: Jonakhensu has finally started twitching enough about Kaname's hair color to go and ret-con the entire fic. Have a nice day.

Chapter 9: (Adams) Family Reunion.

The weather was peaceful, and the morning rather calm as Sousuke walked down the sidewalk, pushing a wheelchair in front of him in which Ranma sat. This was a rather good thing, as neither of the two were particularly mentally balanced at the moment. It wasn't every day that you found you had a close enough relative that DNA testing could confirm it and you simply didn't know about them despite living together.

To make it worse, Ranma was running through some mental math that gave him a rather disturbing conclusion. "We've pretty much accepted that your curse wasn't caused by Jusenkyo water," he said, causing Sousuke to blink in confusion.

"I found the water bottle, it was made last year," he confirmed, having spent the better part of a night looking at all the ones he had taken from the school, just to be sure.

"Yeah, I thought so," Ranma grumbled. "Ya figured out what that means yet?"

Sousuke shrugged, but realizing that the one in the chair he was pushing couldn't see it, answered "I don't see what relevance that has to what we've just learned."

Ranma winced. "Well, I don't know if Jusenkyo can spread, but if it can, going through a bloodline sorta makes sense. Problem is, if you were my dad's second son or something, you wouldn't turn into a girl, you'd turn into a panda."

"A panda?" Sousuke asked, for a moment, an image of one of those large bears attempting to operate an M9 flashing into his mind.

Seeing that the brown haired boy wasn't getting the implications, Ranma sighed. "If you got your curse genetically, which is a pretty safe bet with how your cursed form looks, I'd have to be your parent, or something even weirder's going on."

Sousuke didn't say anything for a few moments, but the wheelchair came to an abrupt stop. Looking up, Ranma noticed that the boy's face had gained a more unreadable expression than usual. "I see," he said, simply, before beginning to push again. Ranma considered saying something, but had no idea what to say, so the two remained in an uncomfortable silence as they boarded a train for their home district.

HR.

"I told you, I'll be fine," Kaname Chidori sighed, waving down the hall at her mother, who had her head poking out of the teal haired girl's apartment door. Over the past three days, Akane had been doting on her daughter to the point where Kaname was considering taking her Aunt Nabiki's offer to move into her place.

The worst part was that, rather than getting freaked out at the fact that there was a secret military organization watching her, Kaname's mother had actually walked into Sousuke's apartment the day before and started lecturing him on his capability to protect her daughter.

Judging by the few stories she'd heard about Akane and Ranma's days in Furinkan, the teal haired girl was tempted to call her mother out for hypocrisy, but she consoled herself with the idea that the older woman would only be in Japan for another two days.

It was kind of sad, given that she saw her mother so rarely, that Kaname was so annoyed with her now, though she was entirely aware of why, exactly, she was being so frustratingly overbearing this time. Unfortunately, that very same reason had left the teal tressed girl extremely high strung, and the added stress was beginning to press on her last nerve. If the pressure didn't let off soon, Kaname was afraid she would snap and say or do something she would regret later.

Taking a deep breath and releasing it as she stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor, she almost stepped back in as she saw Sousuke standing at the doorway, wheeling Ranma into the building. "Hey, Kaname," the pigtailed man called, waving to her, while Sousuke nodded. It was pretty obvious that there was something on both of their minds, as neither was very good at hiding their emotions, but Ranma was trying to conceal it. "Why don't you head off to class with Kaname, and I'll get myself the rest of the way up?" he asked, turning to the brown haired boy.

"Yes, sir." Sousuke said, nodding and releasing the handles of the chair, while Kaname rolled her eyes, contemplating informing him that it hadn't been an order. Still, Ranma was wheeling himself into the elevator, and Sousuke had already planted himself at her side like an immobile statue.

"You don't have your lunch, do you?" she asked, evenly. Sousuke shook his head. "Your supplies?" He shook it again. Pulling out her cell phone, Kaname checked the time and frowned. "Come on, I'll share mine since school starts soon." Sousuke nodded, and the two charged out of the building.

HR.

Melissa Mao quirked an eyebrow as she watched Ranma roll himself down the street in the surveillance monitors. The man was valiantly struggling to keep up a normal pace, but she knew, having looked at his medical report, that there was no way he could maintain that pace for vary long.

Sighing, she picked up her radio and said, "Urzu 6, this is Urzu 2. Kage has left the building. I am going to offer assistance. The Angel is all yours, copy?"

"I hear ya, Urzu 2. Urzu 6 has the Angel," Kurz' voice came through the speaker. "You go help out our Spook."

"Roger that. I will maintain radio contact. Urzu 2 out." Standing from her position in front of the monitor banks, she stretched, arching her back to get the kinks out, and grabbed what she'd need for her little outing. Once she was set, she left the building and made her way down to the street and behind Ranma.

"Damn ribs," the pigtailed martial artist grunted as he forced the wheelchair onwards. "Stupid drugs, stopping me from healing properly." He jerked slightly as the chair began moving faster than he had been propelling it, having not noticed anyone coming up behind him in his moment of griping.

"You should be taking it easy, there," Mao said, as she began pushing the pigtailed man along. "Those wounds aren't going to heal if you keep abusing yourself, you know."

"They will eventually," Ranma replied.

"Smart ass," the younger woman responded. "You should be happy a pretty girl like me cares so much about you to help like this."

"Pretty girls usually end in pain," Ranma said flatly.

"Yeah, probably," the sergeant major agreed. "But I usually don't beat up on invalids."

"I could still take you in a fight, you know," Ranma grumbled.

With a smirk, she asked, "Without ending up back in the hospital?"

"Oh, sure, make fun of the guy who saved your ass a couple days ago," Ranma shot back. "Oh, and take a right here."

"So we aren't just out on a random walk," Mao cheerfully noted as she rounded the corner. "Good to know. So, where are we heading?"

Leaning back and looking towards the sky, Ranma answered, "I'm going to the zoo to see a panda about some stuff."

HR.

"Okay, what's wrong with you?" Kaname finally asked, as she and Sousuke sat across from each other at a lunch table, the military boy seeming to methodically pick at the portion of her bento she'd offered him. While methodically and suspiciously doing things was a normal thing for him to do, when his food came from trusted sources he usually wolfed it down as though someone was going to swipe it. "Don't worry, I didn't poison it."

"I didn't believe that you had," Sousuke replied, lifting a small portion of fish from his plate and regarding it evenly.

"Then why are you eating like that?" the Chidori girl demanded. "Come to think of it, you've been acting weird today in general, you didn't even check your desk for traps like you usually do."

"There is nothing for you to worry about," Sousuke said, turning his eyes away from her.

Frowning, Kaname stroked her chin for a moment, before nodding. "You know, if there's something bothering you, it could..." She stopped for a moment, as if picking words carefully here, "It could compromise your ability to carry out your mission."

"Of course not," Sousuke said, looking back up at her and almost looking offended. "But... given you are the mission specialist in this area, perhaps I could ask you for some advice."

'Right, he can't ask for help like a normal person,' Kaname thought, but then nodded, as this was, after all, what she wanted to know. As the brown haired boy told her, she began reconsidering that wish.

"So... you actually are Uncle Ranma's son?" she asked, trying to grasp the core details of the situation. As Sousuke nodded, she smiled. "That's great!" she said, excitedly. "It's like an old Samurai drama, where two warriors fight together to defend the Shogunate only for it to be revealed that they are kin as one lays dieing... Um, without the dieing, of course." As the boy in front of her gave her a blank look, she tried, "Besides, it'll make your cover identity a lot more realistic, right?"

Sousuke just looked at her as though she were insane.

Huffing, she replied, "Okay, even if it isn't that dramatic, I don't know why you're so shaken up about it."

"I'm unsure how to react," he admitted. "I haven't really had a parent before, the closest thing was Lieutenant Commander Kalinin."

"Oh," Kaname said, suddenly realizing how seriously Sousuke viewed the situation. "I've really got no idea what to tell you," she admitted. "But you really don't have anything to lose, Uncle Ranma's pretty easy going, so if you want to stay in touch or go your own way, he probably won't stop you."

"Hmm," Sousuke said, picking up some of his almost forgotten lunch and chewing it thoughtfully.

"Just see what comes and don't worry about it too much," the Chidori girl smiled, and for some reason, Sousuke gulped hard. "Now, are you going to finish that? We've got class in a few minutes."

"Right," the brown haired boy said, nodding and attacking his meal as he usually did. Kaname just hoped she'd given him good advice. Also, she had an uncle to talk to when she got home.

HR.

"Grah!" Ryoga hollered, pulling as hard as he could and sending the Sumo Pig he was currently training rolling across the ground. Watching as it struggled to its feet, he nodded in approval. The animal, Katsuhito, appeared to be well on its way to taking the aging Katsunishiki's title as Yokozuna of Pigdom.

As the pig trotted up to the bandannaed man, he bent down and offered it a treat, before leading it back to the house. Opening the barn door on his way past to let Katsuhito in, he tilted his head to the side, as he heard a low buzzing sound in the distance.

When he closed the door, the sound got louder, and he shaded his eyes to try and find the source. When it turned out to be an obvious military transport helicopter, his eyes widened and he headed for the house to get Akari. He just hoped the chopper didn't mean what he was pretty sure it meant.

As the Hibikis exited the house about three minutes later, all hopes were dashed, as they saw Ino stepping out of the chopper that had just landed on their training ground, followed by a grey haired girl about her own age, and two people in uniforms, one male, one female. "Well, I told you she'd find her way back," the lost boy said hopefully to his wife, who gave him a disapproving frown.

As the military group advanced into earshot, Ryoga began a speech that was rather well rehearsed, though it had only had to be used for Ino a few times. "We understand that anything Ino has seen is likely classified, and as she has likely already done, promise not to inquire into her whereabouts, and to ensure that she doesn't talk about anything she's seen."

"They are used to this," the grey haired girl said, almost sounding astonished as she looked over at Ino, who laughed nervously and scratched the back of her neck in a way that her father always twitched when he saw. "Mr. and Mrs. Hibiki, we aren't here to ensure your daughter's silence."

"Oh?" Akari asked, suspiciously, as Ryoga's fighting stance tensed from invisible to obvious.

"We're here to offer her a job." Both elder Hibikis hit the ground, hard.

"Excuse me?" Ryoga asked, first spitting out a mouthful of dirt.

"Perhaps we should come inside to discuss it," the grey haired girl said, smiling slightly. "I am Teletha Testerossa, and this is my First Officer, Commander Mardukas, and Ms. Smith, a security officer."

"Her... first officer?" Akari asked, looking slightly stunned, though Ryoga seemed to take a teenaged naval commander in stride.

"Come on in," he said, moving towards the house.

HR.

As she pushed Ranma along, Mao looked around the zoo's food court dubiously. "Are you sure this is where we need to be? The panda exhibit is on the other side of the marmosets from here."

"Don't worry, the old man always meets me around here," Ranma said, looking around the area. "Go over to the Magnetron Burger hut. I think I see him."

"So we're not here to see a panda?" the dark haired woman asked, a little confused. They were actually in a zoo, so using a codename like Panda would be good in terms of counter intelligence, but even then, the meeting would probably be held near the actual pandas, just as an added layer of subterfuge. Of course, even if she and Kurz had decided to unofficially semi-adopt him as a member of their little guard group, Ranma was a dedicated spook, and spooks never made any sense.

"Well, that sort of depends," Ranma hedged. "Is it supposed to rain today?"

"What would that have to do with..." Mao started before trailing off. "He turns into a panda, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," the spook confirmed. "And here he comes." As a man wearing an off-white gi approached them, Ranma called out, "Yo, Pops, you're looking pretty good."

"Can't say the same for you, Boy," Genma Saotome returned. "What happened? Did an Arm Slave step on you or something?" Seeing both Ranma and his female companion flinch, he sighed. "So, you still haven't settled down."

"And you have?" Ranma shot back. "I heard you were in Romania about three months ago."

"Yes," the older man nodded, "and I found the lack of vampires to be quite annoying."

"So you're a horror fan?" Mao asked, having finally found a place to insert herself into the conversation before she got even more confused.

"Of course not," Genma scoffed. "I wanted to send the girls after some of the broody blood suckers for training." Mao had no response for that.

"Yeah that sounds about right," Ranma chuckled. "You forgot about the whole hypnotizing thing, didn't you?" Before Genma could spout denials, Ranma continued, "Anyways, I have something important to discuss with you."

"Oh? Genma asked. "We haven't had a serious meeting for quite some time. So, what is it, boy?"

Ranma opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to figure out how to tell his father what had been going on recently, before blurting out, "I have a son."

"I see," Genma said, completely seriously. "And I suppose this is the mother?" he asked, looking over Mao. "By her stance I'd say special forces, Ex-United States Marine Corp?" As Mao growled at the implied insult, Genma continued, "Well, at least she's a proper Marine, though her stance is so obvious it hurts, and I can see the shoulder holster... She's acceptable, with some improvement."

"Acceptable?" the woman all but roared, throwing a vicious roundhouse at the man's head. "As what?"

"Hmm, maybe a little more than acceptable," Genma noted, as he grasped the younger woman's leg casually, and Ranma groaned, bringing a hand up to rub at his forehead.

"She ain't the mother, old man,"the pigtailed martial artist growled irritably, as Mao suddenly realized what Genma had meant, and contemplated trying to bring her other leg into the fight.

"Wait," Mao began, twisting around to look at Ranma, "you have a kid?"

"Yeah, the docs say that Sousuke's mine," Ranma explained.

Mao almost fell to the ground laughing, as it was hard to balance with one leg being held three feet off the ground. "You thought I could be Sousuke's mother? Completely impossible. He's much too uptight for that." Catching her balance as her laughter subsided, she coolly looked towards the man holding her and asked, "Can I have my leg back now, or should we see how well you dodge bullets?"

"I like this one," Genma guffawed as he released the leg. "She's got spunk." Turning back to Ranma, he asked, "So, where is the little tyke?"

"Little... Tyke..." Mao started to snicker again, as she moved her leg a bit, suddenly starting to think of key steps in Sousuke's raising, like his first automatic weapon or fragmentation grenade.

"Sousuke's sixteen," Ranma deadpanned. "He's currently watching over Kaname."

"Akane's brat?" Genma asked. "Why'd your son be watching her?"

With a wince, Ranma replied, "She's following in the Tendo tradition."

"Ah, so kidnapped again," Genma nodded.

"This happened before?" Mao demanded in shock.

"Yeah, after the third time Akane had me give her a bit of training, to try to stop it from happening again," Ranma explained. "I'm not sure it helped."

"Well, she almost escaped on her own," Mao said charitably. "She'd already dealt with her captor before Sousuke and I got to her."

Genma nodded. "Sousuke, that's Ranma's boy," he said, shaking his head. "How in the world do you have a sixteen year old son?"

Ranma sighed. "That's the biggest problem," he admitted. "Until today I thought I was still a virgin."

"So, you've come to your dear old dad for advice, huh?" the older man said with a cheesy grin.

"Y'know, Pop, for once you're right," the pigtailed martial artist grumbled. "But I'm starting to think it was a bad idea."

"Have some sake and a celebration," Genma suggested, before seeing Ranma's unamused expression. Sighing, he said, "I really don't see what you expect me to tell you, with how well I did on the parental crap last time I was responsible for it. What's this Sousuke like, exactly?"

"I'm not really sure about most of his history," Ranma admitted. "He doesn't talk much and his files are classified."

"You aren't lying about this, are you, Ranma?" Mao asked, causing the other two to turn towards her. "Right, forgot, from what I've seen you can't lie worth a damn. Sousuke was pretty well raised on battlefields, and spent most of his early life fighting in Helmejistan and other mid-east conflicts. That translates into pretty powerful paranoia, expertise in improvised weapons use, and being a damned good shot with anything that fires bullets. He also picked up Arm Slave training, but I've got no idea where."

"Reminds me of you if I'd concentrated on lethal combat," Genma muttered to Ranma. "Probably a lot more high strung than you were as a kid, too."

Ranma nodded. "So, how'd you handle me as a teenager?" he asked.

"Very badly," Genma responded, before sighing. "I'll tell you this, though. Guide him, don't push him. Give your suggestions, try and reason them out, but pushing him into something's probably going to be about as easy as getting the long dead master away from a bra."

"That... actually kinda helps," Ranma said, nodding. "Thanks."

"Well, of course it helps, boy!" Genma proclaimed. "I said it!"

"Right," Ranma said, slowly turning his chair away from his father. Seeing what he was trying to do, Mao moved up behind him and started pushing. "I'll talk to you later, Pops," the pigtailed martial artist called as he was wheeled away.

"Oh, and boy?" Genma called, as Ranma and Mao slowly exited the area. Ranma turned, looking back at his father, who was looking serious. "I know you may be reluctant to do this, but your mother deserves to see her grandchild, if you could..." he trailed off, looking hopeful.

"Maybe," Ranma said, noncommittally.

HR.

"How do you two get in these situations?" Akari Hibiki groaned, as she sat on the couch in her living room, staring across at her daughter, and throwing a few irritated glances towards her husband. Of course she knew, and she'd known when she'd married Ryoga, but the near complete impossibility of some of the things that happened still took her by surprise.

"I'm tempted to forbid this outright, but I understand their security issues," Ryoga agreed. "It's a better solution than those Russians tried, at least."

"Then you'll let me do it?" Ino asked, excitedly. She had been all set to join up with Mithril when the idea had been proposed to her three days before, but hadn't realized that they would have to run it past her parents for permission first, due to the fact that she was under-age. Once she'd found out about that, she'd been convinced that they'd flat out say no, and she'd end up with a Mithril assigned tail for the next five years or so.

"We will let Ino do it," Ryoga said, after sharing a look with his wife. "But we'll need to keep her here for about a week before she can really start."

"May I ask why?" Tessa inquired, curiously.

"She's going to need some extra training," Ryoga said, and as Ino saw the gleam in his eye, she gulped.

END


	11. Chapter 10: Infamous Date

Chapter 10: A Date That Will Live In Infamy.

"I'm gunna do it this time," Kyoko Tokiwa decided, as she and Shinji Kazama sat, waiting for biology class to begin.

"It's not a good idea," the bespectacled boy replied. "Chidori-san went through a lot, and..."

"And I'm her best friend," Kyoko interrupted. "I want to know what happened. I mean, it's so obvious that she lied about being passed out the whole time that it isn't even funny."

"I thought she was pretty convincing," Shinji muttered, before having one of Kyoko's fingers pressed into his nose, causing his eyes to cross.

"Aha, so you noticed it, too. There's something going on," she declared. "Now I'm going to ask. Heck, she's barely talked to me in the last few days, so I've at least got to bug her about that."

"Yeah, but..." Shinji started, but was ignored as the light brown haired girl leapt out of her seat and started over for where Kaname and Sousuke sat near the window. He sighed. He was just as sure as the girl was that something was going on, especially since Sousuke had disappeared shortly after Kaname first went missing on the flight, and a kinda scary looking woman had shown up demanding to know where he was shortly after.

It had seemed like the kind of thing you don't ask questions about, something he was quite familiar with given his father's occupation, but Kyoko didn't get the hint, it seemed, as she pulled a small digital camera from a pocket in her shirt and clicked a shot of Kaname's face with it.

"Ah, the elusive Chidori, a rather rare sight around here, at least to me," she said in a faux-Australian voice. "Beautiful plumage, though."

"Huh?" Kaname asked, looking up at the shorter girl with an expression as blank as Sousuke's usual. "You need something?"

Kyoko thought for a moment of what to say, but decided to avoid rebuking the teal-haired girl for avoiding her, and go right for the interesting part. "So, what really happened back there?" she asked, leaning forward eagerly.

"Math class?" Kaname asked, confused. "Shouldn't you have taken notes?"

"Not that!" Kyoko replied, "You know what I mean!"

"The meeting this morning?" Kaname tried again. "The Student Council President asked if I would be willing to act as the VP after the first guy got sick or something."

"Oh, really?" the blonde asked, smiling. "That's great to hea... I mean, that's not what I wanted to know about!"

Nearby, Shinji just raised one hand to rub at his forehead, as Sousuke watched the two somewhat curiously. "Then what do you want to know, Kyoko?" the Chidori girl finally asked, exasperated.

"What in the world happened to you on..." the shorter girl began, before the classroom door slid open, and the teacher entered with a book under his arm. "Oh... I'll ask you later," she grumbled, hurrying back to her seat.

Kaname just looked to Sousuke, wondering if he knew what was going on, only to get a look of incomprehension in return, which, for once, she agreed with.

HR.

"So, how was it?" Kurz asked, as he reclined in the surveillance monitor chair, looking over one shoulder to give Mao a suggestive grin.

"Chew on your own rifle, Weber," she replied, heading for the kitchen to get a can of beer. "How's the Angel?"

"She, Sousuke, and a couple friends Just arrived a few minutes ago, hence why I'm not following her around in my A.S," the blond replied. "Oh, I also realized where I recognize her mother from. Remember that action movie we rented last week?"

"Yeah, that's right in her file," Mao responded, taking a sip of her beer. "I thought you'd know that, you pull the file all the time."

"Yeah, but I don't usually read it," Kurz responded, only realizing the import of what he'd said when his commanding officer's boot came into contact with the back of his head.

"Creep," she muttered, irritably.

"I love you too," the sniper responded, in a rather muffled voice.

HR.

Ranma grunted irritably as the front door to his and Sousuke's apartment opened, and he fell back into his wheelchair. Slowly entering, he heard a soft thumping sound from deeper into the apartment, and his eyes narrowed. "Sousuke?" he asked, his Chi senses extending, as he reached for the light switch. There was another, much heavier thump, which he placed as coming from the door to his bedroom, before he heard a female yelp of surprise.

"Um, not Sousuke," a woman's voice responded, and Ranma's eyebrows rose as he recognized it.

"Akane?" he asked. "What are you doing in here?"

"Um, that's not important right now, a little help here?" Akane's voice came back, and Ranma wheeled into the room to see the rather spooked woman holding a grenade, its pin hanging from the limp fingers of her other hand.

"How did you..." Ranma started, before shaking his head and stretching out a hand to take first the pin, and then the grenade. Slipping it in quickly, he tossed the now safe device into an open drawer.

"It was rigged to pull if someone opened the underwear drawer in the dresser," Akane grumbled. "Why in the world would you do something like that?"

"Standard operating procedure," Ranma responded. "Besides, I'm sure if you could have when the old freak was running around, you would have."

"With a live grenade?" Akane asked, in disbelief.

"It was just a flash-bang," Ranma dismissed, before blinking. "And why the heck were you goin' through my underwear drawer?"

"It's, erm," Akane said, suddenly very embarrassed. Earlier, she had just come in to speak to the pigtailed man, rather surprised to see that he wasn't at home after she'd heard that he got out of the hospital. Waiting around had proven to get boring after the first hour, and she was Nabiki's sister, after all.

"Just... never mind," Ranma shook his head. "Why're you here, if it's not to swipe my panties. It'd better not be, by the way."

"Gurk..." Akane said, her face seeming to try turning both red and green at once. She was about to respond with her old standby accusation of perversion, when she bit it back. Ranma had the right to be annoyed, and she'd come here specifically to avoid that sort of interaction. After getting her emotions under control, she responded. "I wanted to apologize for how I reacted at the hospital," she started. "I was worried about Kaname, and I guess I just said the first thing to come to mind."

"No problem," Ranma said, somewhat surprised. "Look, if we're going to talk about this anymore, let's do it in the living room, okay?"

"Yeah, right," Akane responded, quickly kicking closed the underwear drawer and grasping the handles of her former fiance's chair. "So..." she said, uncertainly. "You're really hurt enough to need one of these things?"

"Nothin' I haven't had happen before," the pigtailed man responded with a shrug. "Just a whole lot of it at once."

The former youngest Tendo couldn't help but laugh at that diagnosis. "Just as stubborn as always, huh?"

Ranma shrugged. "It's really all right, I should be back up in a couple weeks at worst."

"How often does this happen?" Akane asked, leaving Ranma's chair in the middle of the living room and falling back onto the couch.

He thought for a second, then reconsidered actually answering the question. Telling Akane might mean that it would get back to Nabiki, and from there to Kasumi. He really didn't need a frantically worried call from the queen of the Musk... again. "Classified," he finally decided to say, causing Akane's eye to twitch.

"Yeah, well," she stomped down her irritation again. She'd gotten quite a lot of experience hearing that word, given her husband's position. "Thanks for helping save Kaname. Just... try not to make it a habit, okay?"

Ranma smirked. "Not sure, she is your daughter, ya know." Akane just punched him in the shoulder, though not terribly hard.

"I wasn't that bad, and you know it," she responded, crossing her arms under her chest.

"Mousse, Herb, Saffron, those Seven Lucky Gods guys, prince Toma, Taro... Ow!" He'd been punched in the shoulder again, and this time it kind of stung.

"I get it," the blue-black haired woman huffed, before turning for the door. "I try to apologize, and get this?" she said, though she turned and smiled at Ranma before opening the door. He returned it.

When Ranma's apartment door closed behind her, Akane fell back against it and let out an explosive sigh. That had been, strangely, both considerably more and less awkward than she had feared it would be, and she was glad to see that Ranma had gotten on with his life in some way or another, though a private mercenary corporation wasn't exactly what she'd thought he would go into. Still, he wasn't nearly as bad off as he'd been when she'd last seen him, almost acting like he had during their high school days.

Thinking rather pleasantly of this, she pulled open the door to Kaname's apartment and entered, seeing the back of her daughter's head in the living room. Walking in past the alcove where the front door and shoe rack were, she noted that Sousuke was sitting next to her, and across from them were two other teens about Kaname's age, one of whom was nodding with understanding, while the other gaped as though someone had just proven the world was Klein bottle shaped.

As she watched, Kaname's face split into an evil grin, and she walked over to the surprised girl, withdrew a small digital camera from a pocket somewhere on her uniform, and clicked a picture.

"Huh?" the surprised girl said, the camera's beep seeming to snap her slightly out of it. "I... is all that stuff you said true?"

"Affirmative," Sousuke responded, before Kaname could. "Including the consequences mentioned for security failure."

"I'm not sure I want to know what's going on here," Akane observed levelly, as she looked between her daughter and her friends. Deciding that she would let the younger girl handle whatever was going on, she headed for the bedroom to pack her things and leave them to talk. Her agent had been on the phone this morning yelling various threats disguised as requests, and she thought that this was just about as far as she could push him.

Kaname quickly followed her mother out of the room, and Kyoko looked to Sousuke. "So, can I get some water and see?" she asked, hopefully.

"Negative," Sousuke responded flatly, causing a disappointed 'aww' from the bespectacled girl.

HR.

Kaname yawned expansively as she waited for Sousuke to open his apartment door, reading a few notes she'd written for the test the class was having today while she did so. She'd meant to study it the night before, however she and Sousuke had spent a decent portion of it explaining things to Kyoko and Shinji, and then she had helped her mother to pack up for her flight to New York. Hearing the door in front of her open, she looked up to see Sora standing there.

"Wow, you're kind of late," the teal haired girl observed, confused.

"Someone had disturbed several of the objects in my room," Sora reported. "I was attempting to determine who when Sergeant Ranma told me not to worry about it, and that the security breach had been dealt with."

"Okay..." Kaname said, wondering if that meant there was a dead body at the bottom of a dumpster somewhere, before chiding herself for thinking that her uncle would ever do something like that. "So, are you ready for the test today?"

The redhead nodded, and the two headed for the elevator in silence. It was about half way through their train ride when she finally spoke. "I was wondering, what is your experience with grandparents?"

"Huh?" Kaname asked, surprised.

"After assisting with my Japanese studies last night, Sergeant Ranma asked me if I would be willing to meet mine," the military minded girl explained. "He seemed... nervous about it."

Kaname nodded. "I'm not sure why he would be," she admitted as both girls stepped off the train into the station. "The worst thing that happened last time I met my grandfather was that he soaked my favorite blouse by crying on it."

"He must have been very upset," Sora said, looking confused.

Kaname shook her head. "I'd gotten a really high average that year."

Sora was about to ask what that had to do with a massive crying binge, when a boy in their school's uniform walked up to them. "Hey Chidori-san, have you considered what I asked you yesterday?"

"Asked about what?" Kaname responded, unsure.

"Ah, come on, you know you want me to be your main squeeze," the boy said, stretching out one hand.

Kaname blinked, wondering precisely who talked like that anymore, before shaking her head. "I'm sorry, but your application has been rejected," she said, trying to match his corniness. She failed.

"Come on babe, gimme a chance," the boy whined. Kaname just snorted and walked off. The boy was about to open his mouth again, when Sora's hand grasped his arm.

"I believe she said no," the redhead said, levelly.

"Hey, well, you're pretty hot too, I didn't mean to offend you by ignoring you, but I'm sure Chidori-san'll reconsider when she realizes how cool I am!"

"I... highly doubt it," Sora muttered, both because she knew Kaname, and because she had a strange urge to punch the man before her in the face. Turning, she headed after Kaname, barely noticing the yells of the man she left behind as he asked if she'd be interested in going out with him instead.

HR.

"I'm gunna die," Ino Hibiki muttered to herself as she trudged along, dragging a large boulder behind her, her mother leading the way. "I'm gunna die, and then the pigs are gunna eat me with their slop."

"Ino-chan, stop complaining. You were the one who chose this option," Akari gently rebuked, as she and her daughter slowly made their way down the path where her husband was setting up the training area.

"Yeah, well, I didn't know I'd be doing this..." the younger girl started, before yelping, spinning around and grabbing the boulder as they hit a down-slope and it tried to crush her. "Why am I dragging all of these rocks, anyways?"

Akari sighed. "You'll see dear," she said, both rather relieved that her daughter was being trained in an ability that she'd seen deflect small caliber bullets, and worried, as she knew how much pain the technique caused. After all, she'd partaken in it herself a few years back.

"I hope Tessa appreciates how hard this is," the younger Hibiki grunted, as she began slowly backing down the hill, letting the boulder roll slightly but being careful not to let it pick up too much momentum. That was, of course, until her left foot slipped into a hole on the path made by a tree root, and she fell backwards. Her mother leapt out of the way as the rock continued rolling down the hill, leaving Ino much more bruised than she had been to start with and looking up at the tree tops. "Owie..." the girl observed, before passing out.

HR.

Kyoko was creeped out quite a bit, as she observed Sora, who was kneeling in front of one of the hallway walls, carefully studying several lines of text that were written there. Part of her discomfort was due to what she'd learned about Sora and her brother the night before, but a considerably larger part was due to the quickly darkening look on the shorter girl's face.

"I see," the redhead nodded, before standing and starting as quickly as she could down the hall.

"Where are you going?" Kyoko asked, running up alongside the mercenary. Sora didn't say anything, just turning a corner and continuing on her way, and the blonde wondered if perhaps she had taken some of the insults that had been directed at her personally. If so, the camera wielding girl wasn't sure she'd be able to stop her from killing the writer, or at least hurting them really badly.

Turning away from Sora, she quickly began running down the hall towards the classroom she'd been in last period, yelling for Kaname.

HR.

The student council president leaned back casually in his chair, sipping at a cup of tea. He was hardly ruffled when the door to the council room burst open, and a red haired girl walked brusquely in. "Hello, Miss Sagara," he said, casually. The girl nodded back to him before walking over to the vice-president's desk and opening one of the bottom drawers, extracting a boy's school uniform.

As she walked past him in the other direction, the president casually handed the mercenary his still warm tea cup. "I'll want that back when you're done with it," he said, conversationally, and Sora's eyes widened slightly.

The president nodded, before unfolding a fan. On it was written "Don't ask."

Sora followed the advice.

HR.

"Why would you wish to weaken the character of Chidori-san?" Kaname heard, as she charged for the men's washroom, where she'd heard Sousuke was supposed to be.

"What are you talking abaargh!" The voice of Shirai, the boy she'd been talking to earlier in the morning, came through loud and clear, rising to a very high yelp at the end. "You're insane!" he continued, after a few seconds of breathing. "You didn't even mention your sister, either."

"My sister has nothing to do with this," Sousuke responded, before there was a loud thudding sound from behind the men's room door, and Shirai yelped again.

Sighing in exasperation, Kaname threw open the door, not even having to enter the room as she saw Sousuke standing in front of a stall door, Shirai's arm clamped in his left hand. "Tell me why you did it," the brown haired boy growled dangerously, before he slammed the door on the other's arm, and the Chidori girl winced.

"Sousuke! What the hell are you doing?" she barked, horrified and confused.

"Kaname, I am just interrogating Shirai-san," Sousuke responded, casually.

"Somebody help me?" the taller boy whimpered, as Kaname marched into the bathroom, not even realizing she was in the boys' room, and smacking the mercenary on the side of the head.

"Let him go! He may be a jerk, but you don't have to do this to him."

"But Kaname, he was distributing dangerous propaganda. Often, a war can be won or lost on the opinion of the people of a region, rather than your tactical..." Sousuke started.

"We aren't at war!" the teal haired girl yelled.

"Oh," Sousuke shook his head. "Certainly. I apologize."

Shirai got up, brushing himself off with the one hand that wasn't a massive lump of bruises. "Ah, th-thank you, Chidori. So, how about a date?"

"I should inform you," Sousuke began as Kaname's eyebrow began to twitch, "that any further hostile action on your part will result in me reconsidering the fact that we aren't at war."

Shirai's eyes widened, and he charged out of the washroom just as Kaname sighed. "Why in the world did you do that, Sousuke?" she asked, rubbing her forehead. "You're acting just like you did on the first day."

"I felt the damage to your reputation was a serious risk," Sousuke explained. "And I didn't use any more force than any other student was capable of. Originally, I was considering detonating the offending writing, but that would break my cover."

The Chidori girl groaned. "I can't figure out if that's sweet or just psychotic," she muttered, just as Shinji charged into the room, dancing a jig and holding his groin.

"Ch-Chidori-san?" he asked, his eyes bulging behind the frames of his glasses. "Why are you in the boys' bathroom?"

"Erm," Kaname muttered, looking around. "Urk." Hurriedly, she exited the bathroom, shuddering as she made it to the hall. "I feel so dirty..." Sousuke was about to open his mouth to ask if she was all right, when she gave him a death glare that quickly caused him to snap it shut, and wonder if she had studied with one of his drill sergeants.

HR.

Mizuki Inaba walked down the street, sniffling to herself as she looked down to her cellular phone, considering if she should do what she'd been thinking of. She couldn't believe Shirai's actions, first asking both Chidori and Sagara out, and then, when she'd just wanted to know what was wrong with his hand and if she could help him with it, he'd told her that she was a nuisance, and that he didn't want to see her again.

She couldn't believe it. She'd been sure that Shirai was the perfect man for her, handsome, strong, and intelligent. Well, she'd thought that last right until she'd seen him try to proposition two girls at once. Growling, she began dialing the number for their favorite Sushi shop. "Hello? Yes, this is Shirai, I'd like fifteen specials. Right, the usual place," she said, before hanging up. That felt really good, she decided, and began to dial the numbers of a few other places she knew about.

It was after the fourth phone call, to an American pizza chain, that she noticed them, Chidori and Sagara, sitting on a bench and reading over a math paper while they waited for the train home. Confirming her last order, she whirled on the two, yelling "It's all your fault!"

Sora turned to Kaname, blinking at her in confusion. "What's our fault?"

Kaname frowned, thinking. "I really don't know," she answered.

"You made my Shirai-kun hate me!" Mizuki yelled, her face turning red with anger.

"Ah, you're Shirai-san's girlfriend," Kaname nodded. "You know that he's the one who tried to ask us out, right? And he didn't like it when we said no."

"That's not the point!" Mizuki continued, causing Sora to blink.

"Isn't being a..." she stopped to recall something she'd heard while in school, "two-timing bastard a bad thing?"

"I wouldn't have known about it if you two weren't around!" Mizuki returned, her grievance suddenly sounding rather stupid even in her own ears. "Look, that's not the point, you owe me now for what you've done!"

"We do?" the short redhead asked, looking to Kaname for guidance. The taller girl didn't get a chance to answer, as Mizuki grabbed Sora by the arm, pulling her to her feet.

"You do! And I know how you're going to make it up to me," she declared, striking a pose and not noticing the twitch the mercenary had suppressed, or realizing how close she had come to being thrown out onto the track before the now arriving train.

HR.

Ranma rubbed his forehead as he sat behind the small apartment's kitchen counter, finishing off the preparation for a pot of beef stew. "You agreed to this?" he asked, staring over the steam at his son.

"It seemed reasonable," the boy replied, causing Kaname, who was laying on the couch behind him and playing with her hamster, which she'd brought over, to roll her eyes.

"You agreed to pretend to be someone's boyfriend," the older man started. "That's not going to work."

"Hey, that someone is right here," Mizuki grumbled, from where she was sitting at the table across from Sousuke. "And of course it will, at least for the day I need to save face with my friends."

"Water," Ranma said, and Sousuke blinked at him in confusion. "Trust me, I know. When you absolutely can't have it find you, it will. The date'll last about half an hour."

Mizuki looked between the two Sagaras, her eyes showing pure confusion. "What does water have to do with any of this?"

Sousuke turned towards her and answered shortly. "That is classified information."

"Classified info..." The light brown haired girl shook her head.

"In any case, I have a plan for the event that water is present," the brown haired boy said, ignoring Mizuki's confusion.

Ranma just shook his head, dishing the soup he'd been making out into a few bowls and balancing them on his arms as he wheeled out of the kitchen, using one foot as propulsion.

"How in the world did he..." the brunette stuttered, though she almost completely forgot about it when the wonderful smelling food was placed in front of her, a near exact copy of one of Kasumi's recipes.

Handing Kaname her own bowl, Ranma levered himself out of his chair and leaned back on the couch next to her. "You don't look happy," he said, quietly enough that the two at the table didn't hear.

"Gee, what gave you that idea?" she snarled back, as Mizuki started asking Sousuke questions and prodding his answers to fit what she expected. "The idiot's going to make a fool out of himself."

As Sousuke replied to a question asking him to list his, or rather Shirai's skills, with a comment about impure sexual relations, Ranma chuckled. "Probably," he responded casually.

Kaname just looked at him for a moment, her eyebrow twitching as Mizuki began feeding the mercenary boy romantic lines to use on her.

Ranma just sighed. "Kaname," he started, making VERY sure Sousuke couldn't hear him this time. "You shouldn't be doing that. You know, he probably puts about as much stock in what he's saying right now as the Geneva convention's requirement of a name, rank and serial number in an interrogation."

"Huh?" the teal haired girl asked, blinking.

"He doesn't get the meaning. Same reason all my relationships when I was younger didn't turn out too well. It's all pointless, and he doesn't get why you don't just say what you're thinkin' and get it over with." The martial artist shrugged. "I'm not gunna ask if you like him, or just don't want to see him do something stupid, just remember that, okay? If he says something lovey-dovey, he's probably bullshitting because he thinks it's what someone wants to hear." He gestured at the two as Sousuke clasped Mizuki's hand in his, telling her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world, with a really confused look on his face.

Kaname couldn't help but smile, as she imagined the words in Sousuke's mouth being replaced with 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.' "Um, thanks Uncle Ranma," she said, before starting in on her food.

Ranma shook his head. 'First time I give someone advice after I find out I'm someone's dad, 'n it's my ex-fiancee's daughter.' he thought, before digging into his own meal.

HR.

"All right, I'm ready." Kaname stood next to Mizuki in front of Sousuke's apartment door, as she heard his voice from the other side. Strangely, it sounded even more muffled than she thought it should be given the wood in the way.

As the door opened, she saw why. He was wearing a bright yellow space suit. "What in the world is that?" Mizuki asked, her eyes practically bulging with shock.

"It is a nuclear, biological and chemical containment suit," Sousuke responded, his voice still muffled through the gas mask obscuring his mouth.

"Wha... You can't wear that!" the brown haired girl squawked, her hands on her hips. "Go change into something normal, quick!"

Kaname just barely stifled a snicker, as she held up a hand. "She means something normal people would wear, not normal for you," she clarified.

"Right," Sousuke said, removing the helmet of his suit and beginning to unzip it. Kaname was about to yell at him for stripping in the hallway, when she noticed that he wore a grey hoodey and grey dress pants. "However, if I don't wear the suit, then I recommend we avoid any water or cold beverages, and seek shelter if it rains."

"What in the world is with you?" Mizuki asked, crossing her arms over her chest and starting to wonder if she should have just admitted that her boyfriend had run off. Sighing, she pointed to the elevator. "Let's just go," she snapped, beginning to stomp towards it.

HR.

Kaname wasn't really sure if she should laugh or cry as she stood at the edge of the large pond in the middle of a park, watching the occasional bubble breach the surface. As Ranma, and she herself, really, had predicted the date had been a disaster. At one point, Sousuke had even stood up in the middle of a blockbuster war movie, criticizing the battle tactics of the soldiers in it at the top of his lungs.

The date had come to an end when Shirai had shown up, blowing what was left of Sousuke's cover spectacularly, and he'd ended up kissing Mizuki to try and prove his 'deep and abiding love.' For a moment, the Chidori girl contemplated letting him drown, but she shook her head, picking up a stick from the ground next to her feet and pitching it into the water.

Sora came to the surface a second later, a lump visible on her forehead as she gasped for breath. "You have very good aim, Kaname," she observed, rubbing the injury.

"And you're an idiot; what were you thinking, kissing Mizuki like that?" she shot back.

"It was what was expected of me, wasn't it?" the little redhead asked, clearly confused.

"What, do you kiss anyone if you think it's 'expected' of you?" Kaname growled, putting her hands on her hips.

"Well, of course," Sora responded. "I have kissed many fellow soldiers when it was necessary, and others." Kaname's mouth opened, and she tried to say something, but all that came out was a slight gurgle. "For example," the mercenary girl continued, "one of my colleagues in Helmajistan was shot in the gut, and it was needed to save his life. There was also an old man who was blown away in an artillery strike, and..."

"I get the idea," Kaname sighed, before stepping forward and offering Sora a hand up. "Come on." she muttered, pulling the shorter girl up to join her. "I've got a spare change of clothes in my backpack," she said, as the other squelched along beside her.

"Thank you," Sora said, nodding.

Kaname sighed. For a moment, she cursed Jusenkyo, as if Sousuke had been male when she pulled him up, he would have been right up at lip level, rather than staring at the base of her neck. Still, as she recalled what he thought kissing was for, she shook her head. "So," she started, "If I got a gut shot, would you kiss me?"

"You will not be shot in the gut," Sora responded, flatly.

Kaname smiled.

END.


End file.
